Amazon's THE VAST OF NIGHT is a Fantastic and Clever TWILIGHT ZONE-Inspired Sci-Fi Movie
I recently took the time to watch the new Amazon Studios sci-fi film The Vast of Night and I loved every second of it! It’s not a big or grand epic sci-fi film, it plays out more like a story from The Twilight Zone, which is clearly a huge inspiration on the story. Hell, the film opens with a Rod Serling-like narration.
The story is pretty simple but intimate as it is set in the 1950s and centers on two teenage kids who are looking for the source of a mysterious frequency that has descended on their town.
The film was made in a clever, innovative, and back-to-the-basics way and it’s solid and spooky storytelling that includes themes that are relevant to today. The movie is very much a character study focusing on the two teen characters wonderfully played by Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz.
I loved the script and its fantastic, witty, and rapid dialogue. It was fun dialogue to listen to and it all felt so natural while it was being delivered. There were also some impressive long traveling shots. There was one shot in particular that was a four-plus minute long shot. When talking about that shot in an interview with io9, director Andrew Patterson explained:
“The [most fun] thing in a movie is to wait out something you want to know. And so, for me, it was ‘How can we make this a fun five-minute wait?’”
The point in the film where we have to wait is when the phone operator Fay (McCormick) tells a radio DJ named Everett (Horowitz) that she’s going to send him a mysterious signal that can be heard all over the small New Mexico town. Everett tells Fay he’s going to put it on the radio and not to call him for several minutes. That’s where the wait starts. From there we see the long shot showing various parts of the community as the camera flies in and out of buildings, down streets, up and out of windows.
“We just thought, let’s orient people. Let’s say that she’s here, a whole basketball game is over here, he’s over here. Let’s have some fun with it. And let’s play the music up and let’s make it look cool and beautiful and have a fun ride and maybe tell you that this is what the rest of the movie is going to feel like.”
As for how they pulled the scene off, the director said:
“It’s a mixture of go-karts and camera gimbals and stitching. Everything is actually shot. But we didn’t use a drone. We used camera gimbals to offset the motion. And then we ran [the camera] down the road going 45 miles an hour on go-karts and then they would hand it off and we’d let it go on and on and on. And so it is not 100 percent practical, but shooting is practical [and] the geography is carefully created for this movie.”
To learn that most of that shot was actually shot practically is pretty awesome! This was seriously a great movie that you need to watch if you haven’t already! This is easily one of my favorite films of the year. Director Andrew Patterson created something special and I can’t wait to see what he does next. Check out the trailer!