The Vast of Night

Click here for a video version of this review: https://youtu.be/Sjqv6iKZTwc

Growing up watching The Twilight Zone, The X-Files, and terrifying my childhood self by reading books about UFOs and aliens, its fair to say that I have a bit of a soft spot for a good story about what's in the skies above us. For this reason, the trailer for Amazon's The Vast of Night caught my eye.

Here's the official description of what this movie is all about:

At the dawn of the space-race, two radio-obsessed teens discover a strange frequency over the airwaves in what becomes the most important night of their lives and in the history of their small town.

I recommended this to a friend after watching it and this is how I summed it up:

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The Vast of Night (2020) is a spiritual successor to Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast. This film understands the power of the spoken word (its heroes are a late night DJ and a phone operator), and puts it to great use to tell a fascinating story that relies more on the viewers imagination than on visual effects.

This is the rare low-budget ($700,000) sci-fi flick that doesnt strive to mask its technical shortcomings with a layer of shoddy CGI, instead focusing on a character and dialogue-driven plot. This is not a cheap movie, but an economic one austere, even; a less is more approach that turns at times into 'nothing is better.

Co-writer/director Andrew Patterson isnt trying to convince us that his aliens are real, but neith...