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In High Homage To The Twilight Zone, The Exhilarating The Vast of Night
There’s something in the air on a crisp night in 1950s Cayuga, New Mexico. Sure, there’s excitement as basketball season begins with a game so anticipated that nearly the entirety of this rural town has convened upon the high school’s gymnasium. But then there’s something stranger, a crackle on the phone lines, a light in the skies. In The Vast of Night, this mystery will be cracked wide open by an unlikely pair of amateur detectives. The result is an ode to The Twilight Zone series that is fittingly riveting, exhilaratingly daring, and a whiz-bang technical marvel.
The directorial debut of Andrew Patterson, The Vast of Night follows radio host Everett (Jake Horowitz) and 16-year-old switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) on a wild goose chase around Cayuga, chasing down the cause of the percolating static that’s infected the phone lines. And I do mean follow. Patterson unfurls his film with a series of long takes, some of them exhibiting a performance all the more powerful for its lack of visual interruption, some so impressive in their journeying you can’t help but wonder, “How did they do that?” One of these is a shot that races through the whole of Cayuga, giving us the lay of the land from its major points of interest, but also revealing just how eerily quiet the streets can be.
