NIGHT ALWAYS COMES Review

*This review is spoiler-free.

Lynette (Vanessa Kirby) lives at home with her mother, Doreen (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and her brother, Kenny (Zack Gottsagen). As it turns out, things aren't that great at home. In fact, Lynette, Doreen, and Kenny are a mere 24 hours from being evicted. But Lynette doesn't just roll over and give up, she has one last chance to save her childhood home.

On the morning that she is to meet Doreen to sign a loan, securing their house with a $25,000 downpayment, Doreen is a no-show. It just so happens that on her way over, Doreen saw a Mazda Madness sale and decided this was the moment she needed to purchase a new SUV for herself. With what money, you ask? Well, the $25,000 that was supposed to secure their house.

Unsure of what she's going to do now, Lynette decides to call up a john by the name of Scott (Randall Park) and propose a meeting at a hotel. Scott agrees but is thoroughly confused when what she proposes isn't the least bit sexual in nature. Instead, Lynette tries to get Scott to "invest" in saving her home. He refuses and reminds her that they meet up to have a good time, not to have therapy sessions and talk about each other's problems. She still agrees to go upstairs with him and as a gesture of kindness, he pays her double the normal rate.

Now she's only $24,000 shy of saving her home with roughly 12 hours to figure out where she's getting the rest of it from.

Well, desperate times call for desperate measures...

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Over the last week, whenever I've opened up Netflix, Night Always Comes has been showing as the number one or number two movie on all of Netflix.

I'm sure that within a week or two it'll be forgotten, as is the case with most other Netflix original films. Unfortunately, it is one that deserves to be forgotten.

For the first 45 minutes or so, Night Always Comes sets itself up to be a nerve-racking thriller similar to the likes of Uncut Gems or Good Time. But not long after Lynette's meeting with Scott, the wheels come completely off. Everything that was built up to this point unravels and leaves us with a dull and repetitive chore to sit through.

Usually in an instance like this, I'd be able to say something like, "Luckily, Vanessa Kirby does what Vanessa Kirby does and saves the film". The key word there being "usually" because that couldn't be further from the truth here.

I don't know what it was, but Kirby felt like she was just sleepwalking through every scene. This only made it that much more difficult to see this through to the end. At one point, I checked to see how much longer was left. Surely, I thought I had to be maybe 15 minutes or so from the ending.

Nope! Still had 35 minutes to go.

There are some real gems to be found on Netflix, Night Always Comes is not one of them.

🍿 SCORE = 45 / 100