Vast of Night is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Here there be spoilers – you’ve been warned!
Vast of Night made a big impression on the festival circuit before getting picked up by Amazon Prime for distribution. A true indie made for an undisclosed but certainly small budget, the movie revolves around a switchboard operator and radio DJ who find themselves caught up in an alien invasion in the 1950s.
By focusing on ways to be unique despite not having the budget for lots of FX, Vast of Night finds ways to pop and feel fresh in a crowded genre. One way – they explored new Points of View for an alien invasion story.
Shifting POV
A few big set piece monologues carry this movie, where our main characters cede control of the story to those who have directly experienced the aliens’ actions. One, a former member of the Air Force, calls into the radio station. Later they visit the town’s local recluse.
In both cases we hear a version of the alien invasion story we aren’t often told. For the Air Force veteran, who’s Black, the government made he and his fellow soldiers cover-up alien discoveries by burying spaceships out in the desert. They were chosen because society wouldn’t listen to them or care about the health complications they’d later face from strange illnesses in the years after.
The aliens chose the recluse, a single mother raising her son on her own before he’s abducted by aliens, also for her vulnerability. After her boy is taken, officials blame her rather than take her claims seriously of strange lights in the sky.
Through both of these characters we experience a new version of the alien invasion story. The movie foregrounds the POVs of underrepresented characters – precisely those most at risk of suffering from an extra terrestrial invasion.
Thanks to these smart choices, Vast of Night feels new and exciting even though it’s covering very familiar ground. So when planning your story explore what angle you can explore to make your script feel fresh and new.