The Vast of Night

A small town in New Mexico in the 1950s. The whole town is at the high school basketball game. Fay, a switchboard operator, and Everett, a radio host, notice a strange audio signal cutting into the broadcast. Over one night they try to work out what it is from phone lines and the accounts of listeners. It is Andrew Patterson's first film. Sierra McCormick plays Fay and Jake Horowitz plays Everett. The budget was 700,000 dollars, which Patterson financed himself out of commercial work. It was shot in Whitney, Texas over three to four weeks. The crew was stubborn about period consistency, going as far as removing the three-point line from the basketball court at considerable expense. The film's character lives in its long takes, with the camera running uninterrupted through the town while sound and talk carry the weight. It premiered at Slamdance in 2019 and Amazon Studios took the distribution rights. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 92 percent and Metacritic at 84. It received three nominations at the 2021 Critics' Choice Super Awards, two of them for McCormick and Horowitz. Who it is for: anyone who wants to see what a small budget can do, and viewers who like tension built out of conversation. Who it is not for: anyone expecting visual effects. The film builds its fear almost entirely from sound and from stories told aloud.