Throughout the year of 2018, no less than 18 film festivals (Sundance and Tribeca amongst them) have rejected Andrew Patterson’s excellent debut feature, The Vast of Night, and I think I have a hunch why. Its plot line seems to be somewhat corny (close encounters in the New Mexico desert), and its visual style isn’t a very flashy one, either. On the other hand, there’s very few spectators, cinephiles and even film critics and festival curators that are preoccupied with stylistics. The Vast of the Night is structured like an homage-film, which takes us back into a small town called Cayuga through the screen of a black-and-white television set which is broadcasting a show in the vein of The Twilight Zone (and it kicks us out of this universe in the same way, by the end), which kick-starts a series of references to classics of the genre (ranging from Orson Welles to Steven Spielberg).

Andrei Bangu

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Andrei has been writing film reviews since he was 17. He was published for the first time in Observatorul Cultural magazine due to Alex Leo Șerban. He was part of the Cinemagia jury at TIFF 2005 and he publishes film articles on Filmreporter, Liternet. In his free time, he writes screenplays.

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