Andrew Patterson‘s debut feature, The Vast of Night, has quite a bit going for it in theory. An appealing aesthetic drenched in the trappings of Rod Serling, an immaculately designed set that gives way to a pitch perfect period feel of rural 1950’s Americana, and a game cast that defies some the creakiness that underscores performances within freshman genre features. And yet it never comes together in a particularly satisfying whole. Frankly, The Vast of Night is an exercise in sheer exhaustion, and is far too in love with its words as written. It does little with them to turn them into the riveting experience that it seems like it keeps threatening to be.
At its outset, Patterson and company aim to grab your attention, framing the film as an episode in a (non-existent) science fiction anthology series called “Paradox Theatre”, broadcasting from a suitably retro tv set as the camera zooms in closer and the static-y black and white gives way to richer hues that are more on par with the Stephen King retro flavor that’s more in vogue today. It’s a cute gimmick, which Patterson returns to every so often in an attempt to imbue mood setting short-cuts as the story advances, but it quickly just becomes a distraction, with the fuzzy monochrome effect returning at randomized points in the running time. It’s as if the filmmakers didn’t completely trust that the audience would or could recognize the time period, or would somehow forget, despite the scripts constant references to the “Commies”. These instances even find the film working against itself. Just as it starts to spring to life, the viewer is left puzzling over the meta-trickery behind the scenes rather than anything that actually propelling the plot forward.
But that’s simply a minor quibble in comparison to the film’s greater struggles, which are ingrained deeply into the script itself. Once The Vast of Night properly begins and the players start to take the stage, we’re treated to something approaching a long tracking shot (though really its pieced together more through edits) that finds small-town radio DJ, Everett (Jake Horowitz) helping set up his station’s broadcast of the local high school basketball game. As he wanders from task to task, he’s joined by high schooler Fay (Sierra McCormick) who helps man the local 911 switchboard. And they chat up some of the local citizenry in what’s a fairly perfunctory, if not altogether uncompelling, tour of the set they’re working from. If nothing else, Patterson has a good ability in creating a sense of actual place to house The Vast of Night’s coming conflict.
Said conflict arrives after Fay and Everett have parted, and a strange noise is blasted into the receiver of one of the emergency calls that Fay picks up. After she patches this odd signal over to Everett to get his read on the situation, he opts to broadcast it out further to see if any of his listeners might be able to identify what it could possibly be. While it’s a bit of an implausible way to handle such a situation, it does attract a caller in Billy (Bruce Davis), who knows exactly what it is and has quite the story to tell in how he’s able to parse it out.
This is where The Vast of Night struggles to grab hold of the viewer, as the rest of the film is built around the delivery of interviews (really, monologues) shot as statically as possible, interspersed with scenes of the protagonists running back and forth with equipment in their hands. That’s literally the shape of the film until the source of the signal is revealed. That’s not to say films built around compellingly delivered monologues can’t be successful – we have an entire history of winning art house cinema that says otherwise, but within science fiction, more has to be brought to the table, a kind of energy behind the camera to at least keep the audience from being beaten into submission by a long-winded one-sided conversation. It’s as if Patterson just plopped the camera down and let his actors go. First time filmmaking foibles? Maybe, but it comes at the expense of what should be the most engrossing segments of the entire enterprise. A woman detailing the heart-wrenching story of the abduction of her child by aliens shouldn’t be this dull, and yet it instead becomes the final nail in the coffin for The Vast of Night’s chances to win over any goodwill.
His two leads are likable enough, but are mostly just reactionary in the overall schema of where Patterson needs his cast to wind up, either hoofing it around town or acting at intent listeners to his two veteran performers that have been impacted by the threat that’s come to town. And when the denouement finally comes, it elicits not much more than a shrug. A dissipating finish after 90 minutes of leaden build-up.
“But look at the (art direction), Larry!”