By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)
Spoiler Alert
When much of the movie takes place in the Vast of the Night, the movie theatre (or your home video setup when it arrives to streaming) better be colour corrected to enjoy the picturesque nuances crafted by director Andrew Patterson and cinematographer M.I. Littin-Menz. Even the use of solid blacks for long moments of dialogue gives a sense of you’re listening to a radio play than a feature length film.
The technical work behind this micro budget film is nothing but short of brilliant. I suspect the cameraman used a drone to create a beautiful long tracking sequence which stretched from one end of a small town to another. The tale, without giving too much away, deals with themes common for the era it’s set in–fear of the cold war and a threat nobody expects.
We’re not talking about what’s happening south of the border either. In Cayuga, New Mexico, all seems normal. The two nerdy teens, a self-assured Everett (Jake Horowitz) who works at the radio station and a very gabby Fay (Sierra McCormick), a switchboard operator, are the focus. Both performers have a sweet chemistry as they try to figure out what’s going on in true Hitchcock fashion. They are very capable of solving the best crimes in ala Nancy Drew too. It’s easy for me to know the outcome because of my enjoyment of this sci-fi suspense genre, but these kids are in the dark until the adults they are in contact with reveal an unsettling truth. To know more, this review is split. Huge spoilers are coming.
Continue reading “[Victoria Film Festival 2020] Entering the Vast of the Night, A Movie Review”