Night Always Comes
Vanessa Kirby brings a generic thriller to life which features the prospect of homelessness as the true villain of the piece.
No room for dignity: Zack Gottsagen and Vanessa Kirby
Image courtesy of Netflix.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Lynette (Vanessa Kirby) is sharing her house with her mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and her older brother, Kenny (Zack Gottsagen), who has Down syndrome. She is juggling several jobs in order to cover the basics, but everybody seems to be against her, including her own mother. The film starts at 5:11 in the morning and the radio crackles with bad news: “the fundamentals of the American economy are breaking down, especially in the job market and the housing market. People are actually being paid less…” A message on Lynette’s ansaphone is no more encouraging, with the bank threatening to repossess her house unless she and her mother jointly sign a contract with a $25,000 down payment. That day. It’s Lynette’s childhood home and she has a duty of care to her brother, with the only other option being to end up on the street…
As social commentary dressed up as a gripping, pulsating thriller, Night Always Comes has a number of things going for it. As Lynette, Vanessa Kirby invests her performance with a grounded, textured resolve, banishing memories of her Princess Margaret in The Crown, let alone her turn as Invisible Woman in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Her Lynette is just about able to slip from one persona to another with a streetwise conviction, from homebody to barmaid to high-end escort to girlfriend and, reluctantly, thief. The film’s other coup is its unfamiliar setting of Portland, Oregon, a bustling city with a faceless skyline and the sidewalks dotted with the homeless. And, finally, Benjamin Caron’s direction never draws attention to itself, allowing Kirby’s performance and the strength of the story’s nightmarish turn of events – adapted from Willy Vlautin’s 2021 novel – to keep us absorbed.
“People do what they do to get by,” is the mantra of an old lover of Lynette’s, played with weary wariness by Michael Kelly, dragged out of his bed in the early hours. The clock is ticking and temporal captions flash across the screen as an ominous countdown until Lynette is due to deliver that life-saving $25,000 to the bank. But at what cost? As it happens, Lynette sacrifices everything, burning pretty much all of her bridges to retain a portion of real estate to shield her brother from homelessness. In her world, and in the world of so many struggling Americans, there is little room for hope and no room for dignity. Above and beyond its pressing message, Night Always Comes remains a generic thriller, albeit with moments of real humanity emerging at the most surprising moments. Somehow, Benjamin Caron and Vanessa Kirby consistently manage to keep us on side.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Vanessa Kirby, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Zack Gottsagen, Stephen James, Randall Park, Julia Fox, Michael Kelly, Eli Roth, Sean Martini.
Dir Benjamin Caron, Pro Gary Levinsohn, Billy Hines, Ryan Bartecki, Benjamin Caron, Jodie Caron, Vanessa Kirby and Lauren Dark, Screenplay Sarah Conradt, Ph Damián García, Pro Des Ryan Warren Smith, Ed Yan Miles, Music Adam Janota Bzowski, Costumes Olga Mill, Sound Glenn Freemantle, Dialect coaches Michael Buster and Tim Monich.
H2L Media Group/Aluna Entertainment/Square Eyed Pictures-Netflix.
108 mins. USA/UK. 2025. UK and US Rel: 15 August 2025. Cert. 15.
