Night Always Comes puts Vanessa Kirby through the wringer – again. It’s her second gruelingly intense dramatic vehicle for Netflix after 2020’s Pieces of a Woman, which landed her a well-deserved Oscar nomination and placed her among the upper echelon of actors who can bring power and presence to both prestige cinema (see also: her memorable turn as Josephine in Ridley Scott’s Napoleon) and pop blockbuster franchises (she’s wonderfully strange as a supporting player in the Mission: Impossible films, and keeps The Fantastic Four: First Steps emotionally grounded). Directed by Benjamin Caron and based on an acclaimed novel by Willy Vlautin, Night Always Comes fits her skillset perfectly, being a character-driven thriller that merges literary sensibilities with potent genre filmmaking.
The Gist: A searing opening image: Lynette (Kirby) stands in front of a battered old house with a for sale sign in the yard, her shoulder blade caked with blood. Her flaxen hair in the early morning light makes her look like an angel with its wing torn off. We’ll revisit this moment at the end of the film, as we jump back 24 hours to Lynette waking up to incessant radio and TV reports about exponentially rising real estate costs and the resulting scourge of homelessness. She lives in Portland, Oregon, one of the epicenters of American gentrification. Her phone buzzes relentlessly with calls from collection agencies. It’s bleak.
Lynette lives with her mother, Doreen (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and older brother Kenny (Zack Gottsagen), who has special needs and requires constant supervision. Their house is leaky and run down but in the ballpark of affordable, so Lynette has arranged to buy it at what we hope is a reasonable price – and today’s the day she’ll sit down and sign the terrifying mountain of mortgage paperwork. Doreen needs to cosign the loan and pick up the check for the down payment, and Lynette’s insistent reminders tell us her mother may not be the most dependable person.
Lynette takes Kenny to work with her at a factory bakery, driving past homeless encampments, and then to a college class, where her professor chews her out for bringing her disruptive brother to the lecture. There are government agencies to help with this situation, the prof says, and Lynette assures Kenny that they won’t take that awful route again. She and Kenny then hustle to the attorney’s office to sign the mortgage agreement, but Doreen’s a no-show. They go home to find Doreen took the $25,000 down payment and bought a brand new car with it. Her reasoning is impenetrable and vague, but perhaps unsurprising for Lynette, who’s nevertheless righteously furious. Without a house that isn’t in arrears, Kenny might become a ward of the state, and Lynette might end up homeless. Again.
Lynette calls the mortgage guy and begs for more time. He has another buyer with a higher bid, but he gives Lynette until 9 a.m. tomorrow to produce $25k. Last chance. Title cards tick-tock to the deadline: It’s 6:12 p.m. Kenny goes to a friend’s house and Lynette goes to her second job as a bartender. She’s late, and her boss lets her have it. She brushes it off. There’s desperation in her eyes. She makes a phone call, ditches work, drives to a fancy hotel, hastily puts on eyeliner and lipstick and walks into the bar. Thus begins an all-night ordeal to go from zero to 25,000 in about 12 hours. It’ll be a tour of Portland’s skeezy underbelly involving a sugar daddy (Randall Park), a frenemy (Julia Fox), a former (current?) pimp (Michael Kelly), an ex-con coworker (Stephan James) and a sleazy creep/criminal overlord of some kind (Eli Roth). And it’ll be nothing short of harrowing.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Night Always Comes is the all-night party of Good Time meets the righteous criminal desperation of Hell or High Water.
Performance Worth Watching: Kirby anchors a superb cast of supporting players – Leigh and Gottsagen are consistently excellent – with a memorably raw portrait of desperation and determination. She shows the versatility, poise and command presence of Cate Blanchett (a name I don’t invoke lightly) or Angelina Jolie.
Memorable Dialogue: Lynette’s mantra: “I did what I did to get by.”
Sex and Skin: Implied sexual violence, but nothing visually graphic.
Our Take: And even then, Lynette’s greatest adversaries may be her own mother, and society itself. The situations she puts herself in are terrifying, but the situations imposed upon her are even more untenable. The film contrives to slow-leak details of a traumatic life she left behind, but must revisit for the sake of – well, what, exactly? Survival, sure, but within a system that’ll burden her with debt, night-and-day jobs and a house in need of repairs that she has no time to address. Oh, and a mother who, as revealed in the film’s final scenes, appears to be so deep in denial she may no longer have a strong connection to reality. Doreen’s lack of accountability and self-awareness is maddening – “Why do you keep pulling this shit?” Doreen says to her daughter, clueless to her own chronic shit-pulling.
Being the object of projection is a significant chunk of Lynette’s trauma, dating back to her father’s departure and teenage years, which are the subject of scary-vague references and the occasional bleary, brief flashback. Her past has prepared her for the gauntlet of violence and psychotorture Night Always Comes puts her through as she does what she must to keep her family together with a roof over their heads, leaky or otherwise. Doreen does not share that goal, much to her, and our, great frustration.
The film isn’t an easy, casual watch. Caron skillfully deflects any notions of implausibility – the plot builds to a fugue state with considerable calculation – with intensity, immediacy, sustained tension and a potent layer of critical insight. The narrative frames Lynette’s story as an American tragedy, which we watch with sadness and horror as she tears down much of the goodwill she’s recently cultivated so she can scrape together some late-capitalism dollars and buy a symbol of our crumbling society. No one’s willing to help her; everything is transactional. You think she’s out of the woods, and then she’s not, as another twist in the story blindsides her. Night Always Comes, upsetting as it can be, balances heartbreak and hope, though, and ultimately is about what you have to leave behind – good and bad – to better yourself.
Our Call: Night Always Comes is taut, suspenseful, affecting – and not easily forgotten. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.