One night in New Mexico, in the late 1950s, a switchboard operator and radio DJ discover a strange audio frequency which could change the future forever.... (Full plot summary below)
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One night in New Mexico, in the late 1950s, a switchboard operator and radio DJ discover a strange audio frequency which could change the future forever.
Leave your thoughts about The Vast of Night.
| VarietyAmy NicholsonPatterson trusts that chemistry will compensate for a gentle thriller that chooses to impress with ingenuity and charm instead of special effects. |
| The PlaylistChris BarsantiWhile it nods to everything from ‘The Twilight Zone’ to ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind,’ Patterson’s movie is more a tribute to the romance of a breeze-whispered sprawling night and the shivery thrill of not knowing what nameless threats it hides. |
| San Francisco ChronicleCary DarlingUsing long takes, tracking shots, segments where the screen goes pitch-black, and rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue, Patterson has created a film that forces an audience to pay attention for fear of missing something. |
| SlateMatthew DessemEvery scene has been staged and shot with intelligence, intent, inventiveness, and a sense of play. To watch it is to get excited about the billions of different ways you can combine sound and moving images to tell a story. |
| RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyHow on earth Patterson made a movie about a UFO hovering over a small town in the late 1950s without falling back on every cliche in the book is the fun and wonder of The Vast of Night. You already know the plot. You've seen it all before. But the way the story is told is new. With The Vast of Night, it really is about the how, not just the "what happens." |
| Rolling StonePeter TraversWhat makes it one of the best (and most unclassifiable) movies of the year is the hypnotic way it keeps re-inventing itself from scene to scene. |
| TheWrapMonica CastilloComplemented by the eerie work of sound designers Johnny Marshall and David Rosenblad and music by Erick Alexander and Jared Bulmer, The Vast of Night sells its mystery as a package deal, firing on all sight-and-sound cylinders to immerse its viewers in its story. |
| New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreIt’s an homage to radio dramas, maybe, but also works as a reminder that while film is a visual medium, sometimes sound can be enough to sustain you. It’s a sound, after all, that opens up the cloistered world that Everett and Fay are living in, exposing them to something terrible and awe-inspiring and new. |
| The New YorkerAnthony LaneThe Vast of Night is the most absorbing piece of small-scale science fiction — the best since “Monsters” (2010), for sure — into which it’s been my privilege to be sucked. As Everett says, “If there’s something in the sky, I wanna know.” Same here. |
| IGNMatt FowlerThe Vast of Night is a minimal marvel, drawing out fear and anticipation with not much more than a cunning script, stirring performances from its young stars, and the starkness of the dark skies above them. Within it you'll find a Spielbergian love for sci-fi peppered with a twisted appreciation for negative space and the unknown. |
