Amazon Studios Presents- The Vast of Night
One night is all it takes to change people’s lives and ‘The Vast of Night’ shows that. In “a realm between clandestine and forgotten” we see the story of one fateful night in 1950s New Mexico. ‘The Vast of Night’ follows switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) and radio DJ Everett (Jake Horowitz) as they discover a strange audio frequency that could change their small town and the future forever. Set at the dawn of the space-race and replete with uncanny and ironic period details, this movie falls down the rabbit hole of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone.
‘The Vast of Night’ stitches together a narrative scavenger hunt through dropped phone calls, AM radio signals, secret reels of tape forgotten in a library, switchboards, crossed patchlines and an anonymous phone call. The story is told with stealthy long camera movements and even an effective black screen. McCormick and Horowitz are joined by a cast of Texas and Oklahoma locals, including Gail Cronauer as an elderly woman with a dark secret, and Bruce Davis, whose voice we hear during a phone call scene. ‘The Vast of Night’ full of allusions to classic media, but is nonetheless original.
Director Andrew Patterson, an Oklahoma City native making his feature film debut, announces himself as a major new American voice in cinema and storytelling. He made sure that the film of shot entirely at night, even for internal scenes, and takes place almost entirely in real-time. The film stars newcomers Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz, as well as locals Gail Cronauer and Bruce Davis, as well as others. ‘The Vast of Night’s’ teleplay was written by James Montague And Craig W. Sanger. The movie was produced by Adam Dietrich, Melissa Kirkendall, and James Montague. It was executively produced by Eric Williams, and it will release through Amazon Studios on March 13, 2020.