Night Always Comes Review
Director: Benjamin Caron
Date Created: 2025-08-15 16:30
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Night Always Comes Review: Directed by Benjamin Caron and written by Sarah Conradt, this movie is an adaptation of Willy Vlautin’s 2021 novel of the same title. The film has a runtime of 108 minutes and stars Vanessa Kirby as Lynette, a woman who will go to any lengths to provide for her family on a nightmarish night. The film also stars Jennifer Jason Leigh, Zack Gottsagen, Stephen James, Randall Park, Julia Fox, Michael Kelly, and Eli Roth. It is the story of a sister who fights with every fibre of her being to protect her home and provide for her brother, but she is also forced to deal with painful memories from the past.
Night Always Comes Review
Vanessa Kirby’s Night Always Comes paints a bleak picture. The city is merciless, sadistic, and teeming with unseen horrors waiting to pounce around each corner. The story doesn’t waste any time, depositing Lynette into one crisis after the next, each more frantic than the last. On paper, the perfect combination for a thrilling drama-thriller, but the execution had me more agitated than I was ever able to be shaken.
The only good thing about the Night Always Comes movie is Vanessa Kirby’s acting. Although I detested how her character was written, Kirby does everything she can with Lynette to make her a complex human being — strength, fear, and profound vulnerability. Even when the script fails to provide her with any emotional background, she employs her face and body to imply decades of struggle. It’s a tough character, and she succeeds in bringing it about.
Zack Gottsagen is a relief presence, gamely portraying Lynette’s older brother, Kenny. He is the sole human, warm presence in an otherwise cold, distant film. The bond between Kenny and Lynette, undeveloped though it is, is a flash of humanity. I wanted this film to linger over their bond rather than dash past it in a rush to the dark, frenetic stuff.
Visually, the movie does sometimes present us with haunting images. Some of the nighttime cinematography — neon lights reflecting off rainy streets, dark rooms that are claustrophobic- contribute to the mood. There are a few shots of the camera lingering long enough to create the sense of Lynette’s loneliness, and those stick.
Even the decent setup isn’t enough to carry the storytelling. The film drops me in the midst of Lynette’s breakdown, but fails to give me enough history about what her life was like before this night. Why is she here, though? What has brought her to this point with these decisions? The film sets us up and never lets it pay off. Without that emotional foundation, the stakes become more about procedure than feeling.
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The pacing is the second problem. Although it’s billed as a fast-paced suspense thriller, at times, the time is drawn out too long. Some of the scenes are repetitive, Lynette has a problem, escapes by the skin of her teeth, and then moves on to the next, without the plot moving in the right direction. By the middle, I felt that I was reading a catalogue of bad things that happened instead of being read a decent story.
There’s a waste of the supporting cast. Jennifer Jason Leigh and Randall Park are wasted, and they waste their talent. And Eli Roth’s cameo as a creepy individual is more of a distracting cameo than a full-fledged part of the story.
And then there is the ending, which made me bewildered. Having gone through all that Lynette has endured, the ending comes as a jarring and emotionally unfulfilling thing. The film attempts to hold onto a moment of transformation or revelation, but without adequate setup, it does not work. I did not feel closure, but rather that the story merely ran out of time.
What I’m most irritated with about Netflix’s Night Always Comes is that it could have been so much greater. The concept of one desperate night to save your family is fantastic, and the material is good enough to have an emotional impact. But somewhere along the line during adaptation and production, the film lost its heart.
I wanted to really care about Lynette’s story. I wanted to be able to root for her, to share in her triumphs and setbacks. But the film keeps its characters at arm’s length, offering more confrontation than connection. Even the thrilling moments are hollow because they’re not preceded by the emotional investment that makes such moments worthwhile.
For a movie that tackles matters of this kind of poverty, desperation, and survival, it does so to no big purpose. It touches on the stark realities of a mean economic system and then veers into matters of making personal decisions in a manner that is practically contradictory. What you are left with is a movie that never quite commits to social commentary or personal drama but opts instead for something in between.
Netflix Night Always Comes Review: Summing Up
If you’re a Zack Gottsagen or Vanessa Kirby devotee, Night Always Comes on Netflix might be worth it to see them alone. But if you’re craving a tightly coiled, emotionally charged drama-thriller, this one might leave you disappointed. It’s got flashes of brilliance, a climactic montage here, a heartbreakingly tragic look there, but they’re undercut by a rushed plot that’s left incomplete and somehow detached from its own characters. At the end of the day, the film starts well but gets lost, providing a long but ultimately hollow night.
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