I was eager to see this 2019 science fiction/mystery because it got some really good reviews, a number of which called it a worthy successor to Close Encounters, which is one of my favorite films.
The story takes place in a small town in New Mexico (although the movie was shot in Texas and the town never looks like anything but Texas) in the 1950s. While most of the townspeople are at the high school watching a basketball game, a 16 year old phone operator (Sierra McCormick) and a twentysomething DJ (Jake Horowitz) begin hearing a strange signal coming over the phone lines and the radio waves.
They begin a search for the source of the signal that coincides with reports of a UFO being sighted in the sky on the outskirts of town. After encounters with several odd folks who have opinions about what may or may not be going on (is the ship real? Is it Russian? Is it alien?), they eventually end up in the woods where...well, you'll find out.
My reaction to this film was decidedly mixed. I liked the two lead actors very much. The characterizations in the film are offbeat. The film evokes a terrific sense of time and place and creates a suitably eerie and uneasy mood. There is some terrific filmmaking in the piece. But there's also a lot of pointless showboating. For example, all the reviews mention a single shot that appears in the middle of the movie that tracks all over the town without a cut. It is a technically impressive shot, but nothing happens in it and it serves no dramatic purpose in the movie. There are several really long scenes in which all that happens is we watch the main characters listening to other characters talk. The length in these scenes is supposed to create tension, but they go on so long that eventually we become restless. Really restless. One might even say bored.
My biggest problem with the movie is that it ultimately doesn't go anywhere or add up to anything. The filmmakers incorporate a lot of references to the Twilight Zone into the movie (including framing the entire movie as an episode of a TZ-like tv series) that make it obvious they intend their film to be a Twilight Zone episode on a grand scale. However, TZ was known for its clever twisty and ironic endings. The ending of this movie isn't twisty or ironic. It's not even particularly dramatic. It doesn't pay off anything, nor does it provide a climax for the narrative nor does it make any sort of point. It just sort of happens and then that's it.
There are some really interesting things in this film, but the whole is less than the sum of its parts. I liked what it was trying to do, but I wish it had actually done it. A successor to CE3K it ain't.
The Vast of Night, a film by Andrew Patterson | IMDB
