We begin with an old television set playing an episode of Paradox Theatre, apparently something akin to The Twilight Zone in its science fiction anthology format. It might provoke nostalgia, it might feel alienating to younger audiences, and then again it might feel Spielbergian in its emotional manipulations. But it doesn't last long, and we've dived into the story proper. Eisenhower is in office and the minds of most people -- especially the young ones -- have turned toward space and the threat of surveillance as well as new, unimaginable forms of warfare. The Cold War has even chilled the evening air of Cayuga, New Mexico, and if you think for one minute this small town in the 1950s isn't a thinly veiled reference to Roswell, you're wrong.
It's the first basketball game of the season and seemingly the entire town (a few hundred citizens) is in the high school gymnasium. Everyone, that is, except the two most precocious kids, Everett and Fay, who are leaving school and on their way to their evening jobs. Amazingly articulate and bright, the kids are respectively a radio DJ and switchboard operator, and function in their fictional lives as well as for us on camera as the only characters who connect the town to the outside world. Their interests are scientific, social, and profoundly progressive; they predict early on that transportation by electric roads and vacuum tubes will be commonplace before the millennium (not cell phones, though!). Fay has a new tape recorder, allowing the opening scenes to reveal a lot of character, setting, and exposition without too much hassle.
Indeed, the film works best as a nostalgic piece of setting study. The kids' incredibly fast-paced chatter is only marginally comprehensible to our ears, filled with so much period jargon and slang it's often unintelligible. But we completely understand their warm chemistry and the dynamics they establish of the town and its limits, making the thrill of this movie something of a time capsule we can investigate and pull apart in repeat viewings (mad props go to the screenwriters here). In fact, I wondered more than once while watching if the screenplay was in fact written to be a radio play initially. Later on, the dialogue continues to carry the story, as our two heroes become aware of strange audio coming through the radio waves and of reports of lights in the sky on the outskirts of town.
Amazing as the screenplay is, let's not discount the acting by our two leads, Jake Horowitz and Sierra McCormick, and their direction by Andrew Patterson. Patterson keeps things fairly tight on these two in lengthy takes that force us into their world. Absorbing sound design, set pieces, ensemble blocking, and truly groundbreaking cinematography combine in what appears to be an effortless time machine that allows us access to the most specific and realistic science fiction film setting in the last few years. In my favorite scene, Fay is seated at her switchboard, working diligently, as calls pour in panicking over strange lights above the highway; the humor leads to suspicion then fear and panic as she slowly loses control of the dialogue and her duties. It's a single take, zooming in at a snail's pace, that finally ends severely close to her face as the scene reaches a screaming climax.
And yet this scene is still comparatively early. The story continues and grows surprisingly dark as Everett and Fay race around town to interview people with stories to tell. They claim to know what's making the strange clicking sounds and garbled voices coming through the radio waves, and they suggestively reveal dark secrets about the town's history with lights in the air and tunnels under the ground. And, perhaps most satisfyingly, the mysteries are never fully revealed before the film's transcendent and terrifying ending. I won't reveal anything about that, though; the second half is much more plot-driven, and giving away a piece is already too much.
The cinematography reaches its genius peak during a showstopping long take at the film's midpoint, as the incredibly mobile camera goes from street to school to basketball game to bleachers, through a window and parking lot, and all with fluid, flawless transition. It's an impossibly engrossing take, one that works all the better because it perfectly lays out the dimensions of the town and the real-time connections of everyone in the scene. Other technical brilliance must be credited to the sound mixers and editors, from tape reels whirring and record buttons popping to nodes on a switchboard and crickets in the fields. It's so immersive, so tactile, that at one point the film goes to a blackout while the scene continues just so we are forced to listen to the gorgeous power of sound we would, certainly, otherwise take for granted.
And the sound doesn't stop with real-world, mundane materials. This movie draws attention to the voices calling Fay and Everett, highlighting the women and black folk, who aren't used to having their voices heard, much less broadcast. And then there are the kids themselves who, the film carefully notes, pursue the mystery of possible alien activity not because of the activity but because they themselves are just those kinds of kids. They are the scientifically savvy, socially responsible oddballs who function to propel the plot, not the possible lights in the sky. They don't have romantic chemistry, they have almost no interpersonal conflict. The vast of night may or may not contain supernatural or extraterrestrial bodies, but we are asked to pay attention to whatever voices are given to us from the dark and the unknown.
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