The Vast of Night

In 1950s Cayuga, New Mexico, teenage disc jockey Everett helps prepare for a high school basketball game. He and his friend Fay test her new tape recorder, and Everett walks her to her job as a switchboard operator before starting his own night shift at the WOTW radio station.

Fay listens to Everett's show, which is interrupted by a mysterious audio signal. Fielding calls about a strange wind-like phenomenon from the sky, she hears the same signal over the phone line; her connections drop when she calls friends about the signal. Fay calls Everett, who asks his listeners for information about the signal, which he broadcasts on the air.

A man named Billy calls, and Everett broadcasts him live. Billy explains that he served in the military and was flown to a highly secretive location in the desert. Warned that telling anyone about the classified project would "endanger America", he and the other personnel built a large underground bunker to house an enormous unknown object. Flying away from the facility, he heard the same unexplained signal on the plane's radio.

Billy developed a lung condition that he believes was caused by his time in the desert and learned of other instances of the military burying similar cargo in secret locations, where the same signal was heard. He explains that the sound appears to be a communication signal, sometimes transmitted higher than any man-made object could fly.

The call is briefly disconnected, but Billy calls back and reveals that he and the other personnel chosen for these projects were all black or Mexican, to ensure they were less likely to be believed by the public. A friend of his managed to record the signal and sent copies to Billy and others who worked on the projects; one tape was given to a member of the Air Force in Cayuga, now deceased.

Fay realizes that his tapes were given to the local library and steals them. Billy is disconnected, and Everett and Fay find the recording of the signal and broadcast it, but the radio station's power is knocked out. They race to the switchboard office, where Fay receives numerous reports of "something in the sky", and they meet Gerald and Bertsie, who have been driving in pursuit of the same unidentified flying object. An elderly woman named Mabel calls and offers to provide more information about the signal.

Everett and Fay go to Mabel's home, where they find her reciting a message in an unknown language. With Everett recording their conversation, Mabel claims that the phenomena seen across town are spaceships, piloted by aliens who use their message to hypnotize and abduct humans. She believes the aliens will target isolated people while most of the town is at the basketball game and suspects the aliens are responsible for sowing conflict in humanity, from alcoholism to war.

Mabel asks to be taken to the alien ship to reunite with her son, who was abducted years ago. Unconvinced, Everett leaves with Fay, who collects her baby sister Maddie. They are soon picked up by Gerald and Bertsie. Everett plays the recording of Mabel reciting the alien message, sending Gerald and Bertsie into a trance and nearly causing them to crash. After the eerie incident, Everett and Fay panic and flee with Maddie into the woods.

Making their way through the woods, they find trees and branches that have been charred, and spot a large opening overhead as though an object has crashed through. Everett cautiously acknowledges the aliens are real and may be lurking nearby, which sends him and Fay running until they come to a clearing.

The two take a moment to catch their breath, but they see the truth when they lay eyes on a flying saucer hovering nearby. They watch in awe as the spacecraft rejoins a massive mothership in the sky, and the wind begins swirling around them. Elsewhere the crowd leaves the basketball game, but Everett, Fay, and Maddie are gone. Only their footprints and tape recorder remain.

• Sierra McCormick as Fay Crocker
• Jake Horowitz as Everett Sloan
• Gail Cronauer as Mabel Blanche
• Bruce Davis as Billy
• Greg Peyton as Benny
• Mark Banik as Gerald

According to the director Andrew Patterson, the film came out of one of the ideas he had in the previous decade, which simply said: "1950s black and white. New Mexico, UFO landing."[2] Patterson wrote the script with Craig W. Sanger, although he registered the script with the WGA under the pseudonym James Montague, who is also listed as the producer.[3] Patterson also financed the film himself with earnings from his work producing commercials and shorts for the Oklahoma City Thunder and others. It was filmed in three to four weeks at a cost of $700,000.[3]

The film was shot mostly in Whitney, Texas, during the fall of 2016, starting in September.[4][5] The town was selected after looking through many towns to find one with the right gymnasium. In order to get the period details correct, the production team removed the three-point line of the basketball court in the gym at a cost of $20,000, and they found functional switchboards which were used at that time.[6] The cinematographer for the film was M.I. Littin-Menz. Patterson spent a year editing the film.[3]

The film premiered at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival and went on to screen at several other film festivals. Amazon Studios acquired the movie in September 2019,[7] and the trailer was released on February 6, 2020.[8] The film was released in drive-in cinemas nationally on May 15, 2020, and on Amazon Prime on May 29.[3]

• The Vast of Night at IMDb
• The Vast of Night at AllMovie
• The Vast of Night at Metacritic
• The Vast of Night at Rotten Tomatoes