A round-cornered, black-and-white kinescope opens this resourceful return-to-the-’50’s sci-fi. A pair of small town audio enthusiasts with a newfangled reel-to-reel tape machine in tow — Everett Sloane (Jake Horowitz), a magnetic radio DJ and master of excessive amplitude modulation, and his adoring young switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) — spend a summer night in New Mexico tracking down an otherworldly audio frequency. Dynamic long takes, ‘Scope frames that warrant the title, and crisp night work make Andrew Patterson’s first appearance behind the camera one to remember. (He finds something wonderful in a scene of two characters walking down a street.) One of the few films since COVID-19 hit town that I regret not seeing on a big screen. With the exception of those few moments where, for no explainable reason, Patterson literally leaves his audience in the dark, this is low budget filmmaking at its finest. (2019) — Scott Marks
This movie is not currently in theaters.