Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Vast of Night’ on Amazon Prime, an Earnestly Clever Neo-Throwback UFO Thriller

A nifty little low-budget retro-UFO feature, The Vast of Night lands on Amazon Prime after first touching down at Slamdance and Toronto in 2019, leaving behind some impressive crop circles (so to speak). It’s the directorial debut of Andrew Patterson, who’s been labeled a newcomer to keep your eyeballs on; he seems as inspired by Richard Linklater as he is by J.J. Abrams, and recently got a stamp of approval from Steven Soderbergh. So does the movie match the hype, or should we tamp down our expectations a bit before pressing play?

THE VAST OF NIGHT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Cayuga, New Mexico is a small town — so small, when it’s 1950-something and there’s a high school basketball game, it’s deserted to the point that a flying saucer or two could stop by to top off the tank and grab a Mountain Dew and hardly anybody would notice. But Everett (Jake Horowitz) is a radio man and Fay (Sierra McCormick) is a switchboard operator, and their jobs never sleep, so they’re gonna miss the game. They don’t seem bummed about that at all. These platonic teenage pals would rather break in Fay’s nifty new tape recorder, and banter about gee-whiz-bang gizmos of the future, like electric roads that pilot cars while drivers sleep, or tubes that whoosh people quickly across long distances, or the least plausible of them all, miniature wireless TV-phones that people will carry with them everywhere. Ridiculous!

But the movie fades in on an old tube TV set framing what we’re about to see as a grainy episode of Paradox Theater — complete with an eerie Twilight Zoned-out musical theme — so we know this isn’t going to be your typical night of spinning tunes and patching in callers’ dedications. Fay jabs a quarter-inch plug into a socket with a resounding tactile snap and hears a strange noise, a thrumming oscillation that sounds oddly like a Tralfamadorian P-920 warp drive or something thereabouts. So she plays it for Everett, who soon shares it on the radio waves, promising “a piece of Elvis’ carpet” for any caller who might identify it.

And the phone jingles and jangles as era-specific phones do. One call is from an ex-soldier who was selected for a crazy military coverup project because he’s black and nobody would listen to his wild story; he’s very sick now. Another is from an old woman with a more haunting tale that nobody likely believed because a female voice was telling it. And there’s no doubt Fay and Everett’s little saga is about to get much weirder.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This movie seems like what Spielberg might have made if Close Encounters of the Third Kind had a teensy budget, or what Abrams would have made if Super 8 was less enthralled with gauche nostalgia. Patterson’s work has the audacity of memorable debuts like Cloverfield and Chronicle, although we all hope his soon-to-be-lucrative career is more Reeves than Trank.

Performance Worth Watching: McCormick’s performance brims with confidence. The movie wholly pivots on her axis in a long, one-take scene that steadily alters the movie’s tone from upbeat to eerie: Fay navigates her switchboard like a pro, popping and plugging cables and chattering like the old-timey operator she is — and slowly realizing this night isn’t a normal night, not at all.

Memorable Dialogue: When Fay assuredly pushes back that Everett is a bit of an overbearing jerk sometimes, he replies, “You are on a stick with me tonight!” (You go, girl? You go, girl!)

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: McCormick’s assured work represents The Vast of Night perfectly — it’s a thoroughly tenacious and engaging film, clever but never gimmicky, detailed but never mired down in its bobbysoxers and horned-rimmers. I went into it with zero expectations (I read up on the buzz after watching), and was caught off guard by its tenacious pace, buzzing energy and eerie atmosphere.

Patterson isn’t riffing ironic on goofy old sci-fi tropes like some hipper-than-thou neo-kitschster. He’d do better to ditch the Twilight Zone device, which tends to disrupt the vibe with unnecessary self-awareness, but that’s just a flourish, and in no way makes or breaks the movie. The Vast of Night is engrossing and smart, boasting a crackling script and a perfectly modulated tone exquisitely tuned to a slightly heightened hyper-reality. It nails the small-town everyone-knows-everyone-else sensibilities without overstatement, renders satisfying tangible the analog clicks and clunks of the day’s tech, the crackle and hum of pre-digital radio waves. It also throws in a bit of rich subtext addressing our society’s unheard voices, so the movie isn’t just about a thrill or chill or two.

It’s full of long takes not to flash for flashiness’ sake, but to draw us in, establish character and setting and elongate suspense. Listen to how its lengthy monologues hypnotize and tease us, make us a little bit tense. Notice how exterior sequences are lit by streetlights suspended across roads, hovering on cables, or the ghostly glow of a water tower in the corner of the frame. It concludes not sensationally, but with spooky and awesome visual poetry.

Our Call: The Vast of Night is a stunner on many fronts. STREAM IT!

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream The Vast of Night on Amazon Prime