The Vast of Night
Directed by: Andrew Patterson
Written by: James Montague and Craig W. Sanger
Starring: Sierra McCormick, Jake Horowitz, Gail Cronauer, Bruce Davis
Fantasy/Mystery/Sci-Fi - 89 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 25 May 2020
Written by: James Montague and Craig W. Sanger
Starring: Sierra McCormick, Jake Horowitz, Gail Cronauer, Bruce Davis
Fantasy/Mystery/Sci-Fi - 89 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 25 May 2020
I went back to double check. Sure enough, The Vast of Night is that good. If you see a new release at a theater press screening, you get one chance to watch, absorb, and write your review based off of singular impressions. With at home digital links, if something strikes you, perhaps a line of dialogue or a particular scene, you can go back and find out why something is either working or misfiring. In Andrew Patterson’s The Vast of Night, everything works. Expertly weaving together amateur sleuth characters, late ‘50s production design, camera movements to emphasize place and storytelling, and stirring it up in a Twilight Zone pot, Patterson creates a masterpiece of suspense and wonder.
Co-written by first time screenwriters James Montague and Craig W. Sanger, they want to take you back, back to when radio dramas were still popular but TV elbowed its way into living rooms accepting the storyteller’s charge to engage, transport, and surprise. The filmmakers will both remind those who remember the time and expose those too young to know that the late ‘50s were not necessarily a more innocent time, but a more naive, and certainly more paranoid time. Can’t explain something? It’s probably the Soviets. Patterson introduces us to the story through a television set airing an episode of Paradox Theater, an identical twin to The Twilight Zone.
Co-written by first time screenwriters James Montague and Craig W. Sanger, they want to take you back, back to when radio dramas were still popular but TV elbowed its way into living rooms accepting the storyteller’s charge to engage, transport, and surprise. The filmmakers will both remind those who remember the time and expose those too young to know that the late ‘50s were not necessarily a more innocent time, but a more naive, and certainly more paranoid time. Can’t explain something? It’s probably the Soviets. Patterson introduces us to the story through a television set airing an episode of Paradox Theater, an identical twin to The Twilight Zone.
The first person we meet is Everett (Jake Horowitz). Everett has all the makings of a great radio man. HIs mouth moves too fast for the small town New Mexico locals to keep up with everything he says, which is good for both sides, as Everett frequently disguises slights and insults behind a façade of flattery. His drawl takes a second to become comfortable with as it's full of slick slang and often mumbled around a clumsy cigarette. Everett has his thumb on the town’s pulse and knows he will have the bare minimum of listeners for his radio show this evening because the entire town is at the high school basketball game. Everett’s adeptness at radio switches, dials, and reel-to-reel are Patterson’s way of prompting nostalgia and amazement from those who do not recognize the analog era.
Fay Crocker (Sierra McCormick) also shows us how it used to be. She works the town switchboard. Teenaged viewers may think Patterson is making it up before they completely swallow this was how telephones used to operate. Fay has an unsubtle crush on Everett and loves to fill him in on what the future will look like, at least what Popular Mechanics and her beloved science magazines tell her the future will look like. There will be a voice which interrupts your radio while you’re driving to give you directions. Phones will be in your front pocket and people will know you are dead if you don’t pick up a call.
Fay picks up an eerie sound through her switchboard and enlists Everett’s help in deciphering it. Gradually, the two begin to uncover the sound may not be manmade. A radio station caller (Bruce Davis) says he’s heard the sound before, back during Top Secret military days. A town elder (Gail Cronauer) tells Everett and Fay her more personal experiences with the sound. In real time, we watch this intrepid pair investigate, hypothesize, scour, and splice together what may be going on over the skies of Cayuga, New Mexico. Propelling the action and keeping us engaged during long, explanatory soliloquies are Patterson’s cinematic choices.
These choices fall beyond bold and land somewhere in “this better work” territory. There are single-take shots zooming through town to show where everybody is. He turns off the screen. The audience stares at blank screen for minutes at a time during a tense phone conversation. We hear everything perfectly while the blackness pushes us forward without even noticing as we hang on every word. These are not gimmicks, these are brilliant maneuvers to transform a story fit for radio into the visual realm. We’re leaving the past and marching into the technology of tomorrow. Watch The Vast of Night with the lights off and without your phone. For 90 minutes, let storytelling in one of it purest forms hold your attention and see if you’re the same on the other side.
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