Checked out the new Amazon Prime streaming sci-fi/suspense film The Vast of Night. This one came out of nowhere but was described as a micro-budget and innovative throwback to the Twilight Zone. A couple reviews ago, I said The Platform (on Netflix) was surely in the same camp as anything Rod Serling had done… and the same holds true with Vast of Night. Though Platform adheres to Serling’s angry social messaging while Vast is more akin to his twisty alien invasion narratives.
The film is set in the late 1950s and stars two teenagers… one who DJs his small town’s night time radio station and the other the town’s telephone switchboard. It’s late at night, the town is largely at the high school basketball game, and some of the phone circuits and the radio start issuing an ominous sound. Soon people are reporting something in the sky and others start calling the station reporting stories of mysterious happenings in the desert.
This movie breaks a lot of rules of film-making, the foremost being “show, don’t tell”. The movie is far more interested in focusing its camera on one person and letting them talk. No flashbacks, no fancy editing… just (hopefully) engrossing storytelling. It’s partially a function of the budget, I suspect, but they make it work. The movie gets a surprising amount of compelling footage out of just showing a switchboard operator at work for an unbroken ten minute stretch. Or focusing on a DJ interviewing someone over the phone and listening to his paranoid, suspenseful tale.
This is a pretty compelling, fascinating, and suspenseful film that is more about a possible unknown, unseen presence lurking nearby. What is it? Who are they? What do they want? Are they aliens out of a 50s sci-fi flick? The flick knows how to work its mystery into a tight little 90 minute episode of the Twilight Zone. So it’s no surprise the film opens on a black and white TV presenting this movie as an episode of a fictional show called Paradox Theater. The film certainly knows its genre and its inspirations.
I don’t think this movie will be for everyone. It’s very much a slow burn on a low budget. Some will point out that not much happens or the ending is a let-down… the first is partly true, the second is debatable. But I was very engrossed by it, though partly that was due to just being impressed by the film makers aptitude and creativity more so than the movie itself. But I enjoyed the movie itself just as well. A good watch, especially for an Amazon Prime freebie (assuming you pay for Prime).
Score: 83