Night Always Comes is the rare example of a misguided thriller that feels thin and stifling at the same time. There’s plenty of atmosphere and in-your-face subtext, but also curiously little in the way of character or logical reasoning. Night Always Comes looks and sounds the part, but the tangible substance that can draw a viewer in and keep them there is missing, despite the best efforts of a capable cast and a filmmaker with a solid visual eye. There are moments when one can feel like director Benjamin Caron (Sharper) and writer Sarah Condradt (adapting Willy Vlautin’s novel) are onto something, but these solidly constructed examples of performance and suspense are undercut because the viewer will be constantly confused about how they’re supposed to feel about the overall situation at hand and why these people are acting the way they do outside of just seeing that they are desperate people making repeatedly terrible mistakes.
Lynette (Vanessa Kirby, who also produces) is a former full time sex worker trying to stay on the straight and narrow. She works two jobs – one at a bar, one at a commercial bakery – and still occasionally does sex work to fill in some financial gaps, but now she needs a lot of money in a hurry. Lynette, a resident of Portland, Oregon, wants to save the childhood home where she lives with her irresponsible mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and kindly older brother, Kenny (Zack Gottsagen), who has Down’s Syndrome. Lynette needs mom to cosign a loan and put $25,000 down so she can buy the house, ensuring social services won’t take Kenny away. Mom ends up blowing the money on a new car, showing she doesn’t care in the slightest what happens to Lynette or the house. The seller – who repeatedly says that he has been patient – has given Lynette until 9am the next morning to get mom to agree on the loan and give him the 25K. With rugged determination and the willingness to do whatever’s necessary, Lynette dives back into her old ways and means to earn the cash.
Night Always Comes is one of those thrillers set to a ticking clock that brings the characters closer to a looming deadline, and possibly to the point of collapse. It’s a tried and true structure, and in terms of pacing and gritty visuals, Caron’s film does a fine job of keeping things moving along. With some elaborate tracking shots and a keen eye for the vivid colours of nighttime cityscapes, Caron’s direction emerges as one of the film’s finest and strongest elements. Kirby, a tremendous performer, is also willing to push herself emotionally in a bid to make Lynette into a compelling anti-hero; someone who knows they’re about to get involved with some nasty characters, but goes ahead and gets her hands dirty anyway.
But the main questions that aren’t fully answered in Conradt’s deficient script are why and how things have gotten to such a bleak point. Repeatedly, Night Always Comes underlines its own sense of timeliness by reminding the viewer that America is on the brink of complete financial collapse, and that the gulf between the wealthy and poor is wider than ever before. Not a few minutes are allowed to go by without the characters beating that drum, and it often feels like Night Always Comes thinks the viewer is too distracted to get things the first time. Subtlety is not Conradt’s suit, and neither is character. Any context that’s given for anything are crumbs and shreds that add up to almost nothing.
A major problem with Night Always Comes is the fact that its emphasis is firmly on the economics of Lynette’s plight, and almost never on the obvious trauma that causes her to make this relatable, but irrational single night push to scrounge up the cash. It’s implied early on that Lynette has suffered a lot, but none of it is spelled out until much later into the film, meaning a lot of Night Always Comes has the viewer questioning why anyone is doing this beyond the metaphorical glowing sign above everyone’s head that says “The Economy Did This.” It’s not wrong, but so much is put into that bit of obvious stumping that the driving traumas suffered by Lynette and her unending love for her brother are always riding in the trunk, and never in the actual car alongside the rest of Conradt’s script.
Night Always Comes casts a lot of capable, recognizable faces as the people Lynette has to deal with across a crazy 12 hour period, but while the performers all put in good work, mostly they’re just told to act tough to fit the tone Caron strives to achieve. Stephan James shines brightest as a co-worker from the bar who might be able to assist Lynette in her criminal endeavours. Julia Fox has a nice extended scene as a sex worker colleague who owes Lynette money. Randall Park works nicely against his usual comedic type as one of Lynette’s most longstanding clients, someone who might be able to loan her some cash. Eli Roth shows up for a chilling bit as a shady character who might want to buy what Lynette is selling, and Michael Kelly finds layers to his role as the woman’s former pimp in a scene that’s well acted, but cringe and jarring in terms of how it’s written and when it arrives in the movie. (It’s one of those inorganic scenes in struggling movies that tries to inorganically explain some degree of motivation, but the viewer will just be asking “are you sure now is the time to bring this up?”)
As much as these actors bring some passion and intensity to the table, they’re not playing real people. They’re playing human bookmarks; chapter stops that Lynette has to hit en route to a bafflingly left field and unsatisfying conclusion. (The ending is so misguided that it kills any empathy the film has been building up for Lynette’s family dead in its tracks, almost depicting these people as being incredibly stupid and the viewer even dumber for having cared in the first place.) These aren’t human beings with rich inner lives, they’re plot devices that either speed up or move thing along. Most of what they say is nuts and bolts exposition, because the script is so overly satisfied with its view of America’s current state of cannibalistic capitalism. What could’ve been a fascinating and fraught thriller examining how desperation and trauma can twist a person (along the lines of the similarly minded and themed Good Time) ends up being a tedious experience in watching someone pressing the same button repeatedly and hoping for different results.
Night Always Comes is streaming on Netflix starting Friday, August 15, 2025.
