rmmorelli

About the cleverest thing about The Vast of Night was its promotion, which managed briefly convince some viewers that they were experiencing great acting and an innovative cinematic vision. The truth is, this film has a lot of mediocre acting, mediocre writing, and an uninspiring visual language. Jake Horowitz did an embarrassingly bad job in the lead role, and there were no good performances to counterbalance his failure. The screenplay showed no trace of originality or even competence. Had I been asked to edit it, I would have refused to proceed until at least 3/4 of the words were deleted; to my knowledge, volumes of pointless banter has never been a hallmark of good writing. It also doesn't help that there are no universal themes, very little movement, and an empty conclusion.

One of the most annoying things about this film is that it's hard to follow the dialog, especially if you have any level of hearing impairment. This is because of the cringeworthy affected accents, and the excessive pace of pointless chatter, delivering a surprising quantity of empty verbiage for no discernible dramatic purpose.

After the initial blip the movie's promotion gave it, it's thankfully sunk into obscurity, failing to even earn mention in a list of the 200 best recent sci-fi movies. I can very safely recommend a pass on this piece of cinematic trash.

I gave this series one star for two complementary reasons, that seem to go hand in hand these days. First, the production values, are at a close to amateur level by today's standards, as is painfully obvious to anyone with more than a casual look. There are in fact, and embarrassing number of scenes that look like a Saturday Night Live parody of a movie scene, which is absolutely the kiss of death for this genre, which is already starting from a far point of straining credulity.

When the production is as embarrassing as this, it has the effect of undermining everything else. It's for instance, hard to stomach the sound track when it attempts to achieve a somber mood in a scene that is clearly too ridiculous to take seriously.

Even worse than the production, was the writing. I doubt anyone will be beating down the doors of the writers after an embarrassment like this, but just in case, I'll give the standard advice: if they can't do better than ChatGPT, in plot, in dialog, ... if the idea of a witty line ... a moment of humor ... a plot twist ... anything other than hackneyed schlock ... is as foreign to the skill set of the writers as it seems to be, please, but all means, help them find their true calling in life ...

Finally, in the space of a relatively short season, the episodes seem to have presented every offensive and derogatory racial and sexual stereotype dredged up from the underside of humanity.

This offensive, incompetent piece of trash has no place on Netflix, or anywhere else.

This series is creepy and disturbing, precisely because it tries to do exactly what it claims to be warning about, namely to indoctrinate and "brainwash" the viewer into a strange and idiosyncratic world view. In fact, the ways the series promotes its own viewpoint so strikingly parallel the techniques cited as mind control techniques, that I'm tempted to wonder whether this was deliberate. In other words, could the filmmakers be demonstrating how easy it is to use mind control, by actually using it in their documentary? The reason I doubt this, is that, first, they don't seem clever enough to do something that sophisticated, and second, they are so clumsy that they make pretty ineffective cult leaders.

Over the course of 5 episodes, the series follows a group of people as they recount a variety of experiences that are claimed to be examples of "brainwashing". While the narrative frequently refers to "cults", one of the examples is simply a woman in a marriage with a bad sex life. It's fairly ordinary, as far as bad relationships go, and it's never clearly explained in what way she was "brainwashed". No ... I'm not kidding.

Another example is a man who entered seminary to become a Catholic priest. If I'm following, the series is trying to present the Catholicism, which is the largest religion on earth by number, and the church, which is the oldest institution on earth, as a cult. No ... I'm not kidding.

Another example of ... I'm not sure what ... is the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who owned a diverse range of media companies, including news outlets, production companies, and communications services, all fairly mainstream. But ... the series suggests that Murdoch foisted a conspiracy on the public to manufacture controversies and exercised some kind of control over people's minds. No ... I'm not kidding.

Gee, the filmmakers are so insightful ... not. They bring us such a powerful warning ... not.

I could go on, but, you get the idea. This series is really, really creepy and weird, by filmmakers who I can only assume are the clumsiest of want-to-be cult leaders.