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The Vast of Night (2019)
The Vast of Night (2019)
2019 | Mystery, Sci-Fi
High-concept, low-budget SF movie. It's the night of the year's first basketball game somewhere in Texas, and most people are watching. But small-town DJ Everett and switchboard operator Fay aren't, and they start to get strange reports of mysterious radio signals and peculiar lights. The same phrase recurs again and again: there's something in the sky...

Framed as a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits pastiche, and while the subject matter is certainly similar, much of the style is not: long takes, either static or mobile, rattling dialogue, a sort of self-consciousness about form which is only to be expected in a directorial debut. Interesting subtext about the aliens' agenda and the people prepared to speak up about their experiences (generally speaking, it's people from the lowest strata of society). Genuinely tense and even a bit eerie in places: Rod Serling would never have written something so oblique, but I think he would have appreciated its quality regardless.