Avast

I mentioned that I should be blogging more of the streaming videos we watch, but I haven't been. For me, streaming is for the random, forgettable content, and for TV series. But if we something interesting, I guess I should record it. For example, The Vast of Night (2020).

It's set in a small New Mexico town in the Fifties. There's a basketball game, and the town is gathering in the gym. Jake Horowitz, a cocky kid with Buddy Holly glasses walks in and start BSing with the kids. He is a local night-time DJ. A young girl, Sierra McCormick, asks him to help her with her new portable tape recorder, so he walks her through the parking lot, taping pretend interviews with random families and giving her advice about confidence and how to duck a boring interview.

These youngster can't stay for the game - they have to work, so he walks her to her job at the switchboard before he heads to the radio station. He records her talking about science - she is enthusiastic about articles she's read. About cars that drive automatically, and a radio that tells you when to turn. (Of course, why do you need the second if you have the first?). Even phone that fit in your pocket and have a little TV on one side, across from the dial. It's a cute scene - and as a few critics have pointed out, we're now ~20 minutes in and all we have is a cocky high school graduate walking a shy 16-year old girl to her job. So it's a slow build.

At the switchboard, McCormick gets calls that are only static and a strange tone. She tunes into Horowitz's radio show and hears the same thing. So she calls him and tells him what's up. He replays the airtape and hears the sound himself. So he broadcasts it over the air and asks listeners to help identify it. 

A caller who will only identify himself as Billy tells a story of a secret military base, a mysterious object, and the same sound. He says he contracted a strange disease after that, as did many of the others in the crew. His call is disconnected, and when he comes back he notes that he and most of the crew are African or Mexican American, maybe because they are disposable, maybe because no one will believe them. But he mentions tapes, which turn out to be in the town library.

McCormick breaks into the library to get the tapes and brings them to the station. There is a scene where Horowitz threads each tape and plays a few seconds until they find the right one. When they play it on the air, the power goes out.

Back at the switchboard, it's getting weird with people shouting about things in the sky. At the station, and older woman calls and asks them to come to her to get the story. When they arrive, she tells of how her son was taken by a UFO that made those same sounds. She tells of a message they use to hypnotize humans before abducting them. Horowitz doesn't believe her, and leaves while she is begging him to take her with him. But soon enough he has reason to believe her.

First, I want to mention that this reminded me a lot of Pontypool. Both spend a lot of the movie at an isolated location like a radio station or the switchboard, with communication to the outside world restricted to a narrow channel. But Vast had a different angle, and also a different style. The camerawork combined long tracking shots and quick editing to mix up the pace. You might accuse it of being self-indulgent. I thought it was a little show-offy, but tasteful. I also liked the friendship between the main characters. He was kind of obnoxious and full of himself, always teasing her. She was not very self-confident, but as a 16-year old, she showed a lot of initiative. And there was never a hint of romance. 

In conclusion, a good streaming film, presented and paid for by Amazon. I wonder if this would have done much if released in theaters instead of to a quarantined world over streaming.