“The Vast of Night”

(USA)

Metacritic (4/10), Rotten Tomatoes (**)

I waited a long time to see this, and, now that I finally have, I can honestly say it wasn’t at all worth it. This quasi-kitschy sci-fi offering exclusively from Amazon Prime is stylishly filmed with an inventive sound design, but that’s about it. The tediously long-winded monologues in which characters expound on their allegedly extraordinary experiences are far from groundbreaking and told in such painfully dull detail that they could put even hard core insomniacs to sleep. If you’re interested in hearing a more compelling account about lights in the sky and alien abduction, just tune in to any episode of Coast to Coast AM radio on the subject; you’ll be better rewarded there. The treatment of such material here is so ordinary and already familiar that there is absolutely nothing new, original or imaginative about it. Even the camp factor, which could have been played up for laughs to relieve the incessant boredom, is largely left on the table. How this ended up on a number of Top 10 lists for 2019 is beyond me.