The Vast of Night (2019)
Directed by Andrew Patterson
No — The Vast of Night is not woke, scoring 13 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
The Vast of Night arrives dressed as a genre exercise and mostly stays that way, which is its quiet triumph.
Consciousness Markers
Billy's monologue notes that the secret project's personnel were deliberately Black or Mexican so their testimony could be dismissed, a genuine racial-consciousness beat woven into the plot.
The two leads are white, but a Black character (Billy) delivers a substantial, pivotal monologue. This is natural story inclusion rather than a self-conscious diversity mandate, so the score stays modest.
Fay is a capable female co-protagonist who anchors the investigation, but the film makes no explicit feminist argument and treats her competence as simply character, not thesis.
The film is a moody, atmospheric genre piece that shows rather than preaches; it carries no didactic social messaging.
No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or subtext appear anywhere in the film.
No environmental or climate themes are present.
No critique of capitalism, wealth, or class appears in the film.
No body-positivity themes or messaging are present.
No neurodivergence themes or characters are present.
The film is a fictional 1950s UFO story loosely inspired by real incidents, but it makes no revisionist historical argument.
Why it received this score
The Vast of Night arrives dressed as a genre exercise and mostly stays that way, which is its quiet triumph. Andrew Patterson shot it for $700,000 in a Texas town with the three-point line scraped off the gymnasium floor, and the frugality shows in the best sense: long unbroken takes, a switchboard, a tape recorder, two teenagers chasing a frequency across a New Mexico night. It is atmospheric, patient, and entirely uninterested in instructing anyone. The camera drifts down empty streets and through a basketball game without pausing to explain what we should feel about any of it.
The film's one moment of social friction comes when Billy, a former military worker, calls the radio station and describes a secret desert bunker. He notes that the project's personnel were Black or Mexican, a detail he suspects was engineered so their testimony could be dismissed. It is a sharp observation, folded into a monologue about buried cargo and strange signals, and the film lets it land without a follow-up speech. This is racial consciousness as plot architecture, not as a seminar. Billy's account does the work of the scene. Nobody turns to the camera.
Fay Crocker anchors the investigation with competence and a cool head, and the film treats this as ordinary fact, which is the correct approach. She operates the switchboard, retrieves the tapes, and carries the picture through a ten-minute unbroken take, and at no point does the screenplay stop to congratulate itself for having written her. The result is a work with a small, honest amount of cultural texture and no interest in a thesis. It wants to unsettle, not to instruct. On the sommelier's ledger, this is a restrained vintage: a few notes of social awareness, no aftertaste of sermonizing, and a finish that lingers on the mystery instead of the message.
In the end, the film's politics are the politics of the small town it depicts: present, unremarked, and subordinate to the sound of static. That restraint is rare and worth recording. We grade it accordingly, with a clean palate and no complaints about the vintage.
{"thematic_tags": []}
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
At the dawn of the space-race, two radio-obsessed teens discover a strange frequency over the airwaves in what becomes the most important night of their lives and in the history of their small town.
Questions about The Vast of Night
Is The Vast of Night woke?
No — The Vast of Night is not woke, scoring 13 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does The Vast of Night have any woke elements?
1 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Racial Consciousness (35). On Racial Consciousness: Billy's monologue notes that the secret project's personnel were deliberately Black or Mexican so their testimony could be dismissed, a genuine racial-consciousness beat woven into the plot.
How does The Vast of Night compare to other 2019 movies?
It ranks #158 of the 284 films from 2019 we've scored; their average is 22. The wokest is Black Christmas (79).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.