Review of the movie "Night Always Comes"

Starting August 15, Netflix will be offering the crime thriller Night Always Comes, based on the 2021 novel of the same name by American writer and musician Willie Vlautin. Read the review below to find out whether the movie is worth watching.

“Night Always Comes”

Genre crime thriller
Director Benjamin Caron
Starring Vanessa Kirby, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stefan James, Randall Park, Julia Fox, Michael Kelly, Eli Roth, Zachary Gottsagen
Premiere Netflix
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb

Lynette, a slightly twitchy blonde, lives with her willful mother, Doreen, and her autistic older brother, Kenny, in Portland, Oregon. At any cost, she wants to keep her house, which is about to be taken away unless she pays $25,000. All of Lynette’s hopes are dashed when Doreen buys a brand new Mazda instead of providing the necessary funds on time.

After a quarrel with her unhelpful parent, Lynette rushes to find the necessary amount of money in all possible and impossible ways: she has to get the money before nine in the morning. And no matter how her search ends, it’s clear that she will remember this night for the rest of her life.

British director Benjamin Caron is primarily known for his work on the hit series Sherlock, The Crown and “Andor”, once again addresses the topic of misappropriation of money, as in his previous feature film Sharper (2023). However, this time it is not about a scam, but about socially disadvantaged people, such as the poor Lynette, who works two jobs and still lives in poverty.

This is reinforced by the constant repetition of the radio somewhere in the background: “The American economy is collapsing,” “Wages are falling, prices are rising,” “Everything is rising except wages,” sound off-screen voices on Portland FM. And this is not to mention a lecture at a local university with theses such as “in the end, the difference between monetarism and Keynesianism is just a difference in views on how to increase economic growth.” The radio complaints of ordinary citizens are interrupted by advertisements for quick money.

“Night Always Comes” belongs to the category of thrillers whose events take place during one night. This plot formula allows not only to saturate the action with a good density of events so that you don’t get bored, but also to put the character in a really difficult situation. Thus, causing sincere feelings for the hero/heroine among the audience. And for a certain time, as long as the authors diligently follow this formula, they make interesting, eventful, tense movies that you watch with pleasure.

However, somewhere after the first hour of the movie, the narrative takes a wrong turn, which rapidly spoils the overall impression of what we have seen. In addition to the fact that the heroic Lynette finds herself in more and more ridiculous and dubious situations, the filmmakers abruptly shift the emphasis, ignoring the previous content. Toward the end, the movie changes genre altogether, transforming from an action thriller into an acutely social family drama. But this is not how it works.

There is no trace of the off-screen voices talking about poverty and price hikes in relation to rental housing. Neither is there any trace of an exciting thriller. Instead, we learn more details about the tumultuous past of the long-suffering blonde, and later witness the clarification of the relationship between mother and daughter. But you can’t really feel them in any case — you can’t change the rules of the game during the game and hope that someone will like it.

Vanessa Kirby, a regular on today’s screens, gives a confident performance as a desperate woman on the edge of a metaphorical cliff: “Why are you so mad?” — her older brother asks her directly. And for the second month in a row, after “The Fantastic Four: First Steps”, the actress appears in the Ukrainian box office simultaneously with Pedro Pascal. However, now in various projects — you can see the actor playing Mr. Fantastic in the next cinema hall in “Eddington” by Ari Aster.

After watching the movie, it’s hard to get rid of the idea that it would have been better if the authors had continued to bend the line of a pure, dynamic crime thriller until the end. Even with a bunch of script conventions, but without inappropriate impurities in the form of vague dramatic mother-daughter relationships and, consequently, boredom. The fact that the most noticeable result of Lynette’s numerous wanderings is that in the morning the Portland bakery will lose a hardworking employee. Or, more accurately, the private enterprise of a wealthy benefactor.