Here is yet another tiny, indie science-fiction film that has achieved a measure of critical acclaim all out of proportion with its budget. It’s the debut feature of its director Andrew Patterson who basically kept submitting it to many, many film festivals and finally got it to be shown in drive-in cinemas amidst the lockdowns of 2020. There’s is nothing new here to add to the extensive canon of UFO films but it does have an angle all of its own and I can’t help but love a film that knows exactly what it is trying to do as it is the case here.

In the small town that is Cayuga, New Mexico in the 1950s, local radio host Everett is called to the hall where the whole town is gathering to watch a basketball game to solve a technical problem. He is accosted by his friend, Fay, who is eager to talk about and test a portable tape recorder she has just bought. They later leave together, Everett to the radio station and Fay to her part-time job as a telephone switchboard operator. While on the job, Fay hears a strange sound come on during Everett’s show and starts hearing the same signal interrupting phone calls. She records it for Everett to retransmit on air as he asks listeners whether they know anything about it. Eventually a man calls in to tell a story about how he encountered the same sound while working on a variety of top secret construction projects for the US government. Meanwhile Fay also starts getting calls about a mysterious phenomenon in the sky over the town.

This film gets off to a bit of an awkward start with entirely too much dialogue as Everett and Fay gets to talking to each other about her tape recorder. I think the intent is to get viewers used to listening to stories as this film is ultimately all about oral storytelling. You have the guy who calls in to tell his story, the elderly woman in town who knows more about what is going on and so on. The film is also a kind of love letter to the analogue communications devices of the era, what with Fay gushing over her new tape recorder, Everett casually showing her the much better equipment he has at the radio station, how Fay needs to manually plug physical cables at the switchboard and of course the film’s framing device as this being an old television show. It’s all meant to be a throwback to the pulp science-fiction of yesterday, with the kind of stories that are published in magazines and old conspiracy theories. As I noted, none of this is new to a generation raised on The X-Files but I do love how deliberate and controlled this is as an experience, ratcheting the tension up slowly.

Even though the plot here is dead simple, I rather admire the cleverness of the script in many small ways. Having almost everyone who lives in the town being present at the basketball game means the town is almost empty while the interesting things are going on, contributing to the atmosphere of the piece and the sense of the rest of them being sheep who don’t know the truth of what is happening. I also like Fay’s subtle character development over the course of the evening. At the very beginning, she evinces hero-worship levels of devotion to Everett due to his superior knowledge of the cool stuff she’s into. But later she wises to the fact that Everett can be both smart and a bit of a jerk, and eventually starts pushing back, becoming a full partner in crime rather than just being his underling. The actress who plays Fay, Sierra McCormick, is particularly commendable as she has to carry scenes alone such as on the switchboard as she works out that something strange is going on.

Apparently the director funded the whole film himself by saving money and working on commercials and other small projects, making this the perfect example of what indie science-fiction can achieve. It may not be particularly original, there is a unity of purpose and cleanness in design here that is very appealing.