Netflix’s Frenetic, Extremely R-Rated Thriller Is A Late-Night Crime Spiral 

By Robert Scucci
| Published 25 seconds ago

I think the most upsetting thing about movies involving average people who need a second chance is how little it actually takes to turn their lives around. 2003’s The Big Empty centers on a man who puts himself in increasingly dangerous situations because somebody offered him $27,000 to be a bag man. Mel Gibson’s Payback (1999) is about a man who goes to hell and back for $70,000 that was stolen from him. Most people, if given that kind of money with no strings attached, could wipe out a car payment, a maxed-out credit card, or finally finish paying off their student debt.

Those who are slightly more fortunate could use it as a down payment on a house. Or, if you’re like Lynette (Vanessa Kirby) from 2025’s Night Always Comes, you save up the exact amount you need to avoid eviction, only for your mother to blow it on a brand new Mazda, effectively putting you out on the street if you can’t recoup the cash in less than a day.

The entire movie plays out like a run of the worst possible luck, escalating to the point of no return, with no support system in place to bail Lynette out. If I had to compare Night Always Comes to another recent film, it’s the perfect spiritual companion to the Safdie brothers’ 2017 release, Good Time. The difference is that Good Time hinges on bad decisions made by a bad person, while Night Always Comes is a series of bad decisions made by somebody pushed into desperation by her upbringing and lack of reasonable social safety nets.

Can’t Catch A Break

When Night Always Comes first introduces Lynette, she’s already at her lowest point, but she still finds ways to make things exponentially worse for herself. She’s working a string of menial jobs, saving every dollar so she can purchase the house her family is renting. Her older brother Kenny (Zack Gottsagen) has Down Syndrome, and she’s more of a parent to him than anyone else. Their mother, Doreen (Jennifer Jason Leigh), is emotionally absent and apathetic, so the responsibility of keeping the family afloat falls squarely on Lynette.

When Lynette finally scrapes together $25,000 for the down payment, she’s horrified to learn Doreen spent it all on a new car. David (J. Claude Deering), the owner of the house, tells her she has until 9:00 am the next morning to come up with the money before he sells the house to someone else. Not willing to go down without a fight, Lynette, who has a checkered past, slips back into old habits to recoup her losses. That decision sends her spiraling through the seediest corners of Portland, Oregon, digging herself deeper into a criminal life she doesn’t necessarily approve of, but understands might be the only way out.

Desperate, Lynette returns to sex work, which leads to her stealing a former client’s car. She tracks down her old friend Gloria (Julia Fox), who owes her money but refuses to pay. Gloria is doing well for herself as a live-in mistress to a corrupt politician, and while she won’t help financially, she does let it slip that he keeps a safe full of valuables in his closet. That pushes Lynette to reach out to her coworker Cody (Stephan James), an ex-con who knows how to crack safes.

Following a straightforward chain of “this happened, then this happened,” Night Always Comes keeps pushing Lynette deeper into Portland’s criminal underworld, with Kenny tagging along because there’s no one else to care for him in the middle of the night. Along the way, we learn about Lynette’s past as a runaway forced into sex work by her then-boyfriend Tommy (Michael Kelly) when she was still a teenager. It’s tragic, but it also makes it easier to sympathize with someone who has clearly been dealt a bad hand and run out of honest ways to course correct.

As expected, nearly every plan Lynette comes up with in Night Always Comes backfires epically, but she refuses to quit. Not with stakes this high. Not when her mother’s impulsive decisions are about to put her on the street and send Kenny into state care.

A Spiritual Successor To Good Time

If you’ve seen Good Time, Night Always Comes will feel familiar. In that film, Robert Pattinson’s Connie, who also has a cognitively impaired younger brother, goes on a crime spree that spirals out of control over the course of a single night. Where the films diverge is motive. Connie exploits his brother because he believes the law will go easier on him, while Lynette makes every decision with the intent of protecting Kenny, even if those decisions are deeply flawed.

What makes this harder to watch is that Lynette is actually trying. She works hard, tries to break the cycle she was born into, and attempts to do things the right way. But as the radio bumpers at the start of the film point out, most families are a couple car repairs and one missed shift away from losing everything. The film doesn’t excuse her behavior, but it does make a strong case for how quickly desperation can push people into choices they never thought they’d make when their back’s against the wall.

It does get a little heavy-handed by the third act, but Night Always Comes remains a solid watch. Vanessa Kirby and Zack Gottsagen stand out, largely because the family dynamic is so off-kilter. A younger sister acting as a parent to her older brother, while their actual mother sits on the sidelines, completely disconnected from the damage she’s causing, makes for inherently compelling storytelling. 

It’s not an easy watch, and the ending lands in unresolved territory. It’s neither tragic nor triumphant, which might frustrate anyone hoping for a clean resolution. But life rarely works that way, and neither does this movie. You can sympathize with someone trying to escape a nightmare before it swallows her whole, or judge her as if you’d somehow make better choices in the same situation.

Night Always Comes is a Netflix Original and is available to stream with an active subscription.