What if aliens came to Earth, but we were all too busy to notice? At a time when the U.S. government has recently released videos of aerial craft it has not identified, but we remain (somewhat understandably) occupied with . . . other things, it’s a question worth pondering. It’s also a question at the heart of The Vast of Night, the directorial debut of Andrew Patterson. The low-budget sci-fi film, recently released on Amazon Prime, uses the familiar conventions of the 1950s B-movie to engage deeper questions, not just about aliens but also about human life.
The Vast of Night takes us to a New Mexico town in the 1950s. It is a normal night, and just about everyone in town is at the high-school basketball game. Fay (Sierra McCormack) and Everett (Jake Horowitz) are a pair of high-school students who leave the game together but then separate for their respective jobs: Fay as a switchboard operator, and Everett as a radio DJ. Soon after Fay settles in for her shift, she starts getting strange accounts of things in the sky, reinforced by mysterious noises she is picking up. Linking up with Everett, she broadcasts them on his show, and he asks if anyone knows what they might be. An enigmatic listener calls in saying he can tell them, and . . . we’re off to the races.
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