The Vast of Night (2020) is a spiritual successor to Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast. This film understands the power of the spoken word (its heroes are a late night DJ and a phone operator), and puts it to great use to tell a fascinating story that relies more on the viewer’s imagination than on visual effects.

This is the rare low-budget ($700,000) sci-fi flick that doesn’t strive to mask its technical shortcomings with a layer of shoddy CGI, instead focusing on a character and dialogue-driven plot. This is not a cheap movie, but an economic one — austere, even; a ‘less is more’... read the rest.