2025 Netflix
Rated: R
Length: 1 hr 48min
Crime ~ Drama ~ Thriller
Directed by: Benjamin Caron
Starring: Vanessa Kirby, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Zack Gottsagen, Stephen James, Randall Park, Julia Fox, Michael Kelly, and Eli Roth.
$25,000….1 Night….No Other Options
THE BOOK:
The Night Always Comes: A Novel
SYNOPSIS:
Barely thirty, Lynette is exhausted. Saddled with bad credit and juggling multiple jobs, some illegally, she’s been diligently working to buy the house she lives in with her mother and developmentally disabled brother Kenny. Portland’s housing prices have nearly quadrupled in fifteen years, and the owner is giving them a good deal. Lynette knows it’s their last best chance to own their own home—and obtain the security they’ve never had. While she has enough for the down payment, she needs her mother to cover the rest of the asking price. But a week before they’re set to sign the loan papers, her mother gets cold feet and reneges on her promise, pushing Lynette to her limits to find the money they need.
Set over two days and two nights, The Night Always Comes follows Lynette’s frantic search—an odyssey of hope and anguish that will bring her face to face with greedy rich men and ambitious hustlers, those benefiting and those left behind by a city in the throes of a transformative boom. As her desperation builds and her pleas for help go unanswered, Lynette makes a dangerous choice that sets her on a precarious, frenzied spiral. In trying to save her family’s future, she is plunged into the darkness of her past, and forced to confront the reality of her life.
A heart wrenching portrait of a woman hungry for security and a home in a rapidly changing city, The Night Always Comes raises the difficult questions we are often too afraid to ask ourselves: What is the price of gentrification, and how far are we really prepared to go to achieve the American Dream? Is the American dream even attainable for those living at the edges? Or for too many of us, is it only a hollow promise?
THE MOVIE:
FROM NETFLIX:
Night Always Comes follows Lynette (Vanessa Kirby), a woman who risks everything to secure the house that represents a future for her family. Lynette, who rises each morning before sunrise to juggle multiple jobs, which are not all on the level, while also caring for her mother Doreen and older brother Kenny. Lynette has been hardened by her hardscrabble life; her bedroom houses the washer-dryer, an oil furnace and a utility sink. There’s little or no money for new clothes or for treats. Lynette has gone without so she can save cash to purchase the ramshackle home her family has rented for decades in an area where the ‘G’ word, gentrification, has left a bitter taste; the working classes are being pushed outta town. A plan had been in place to raise a mortgage on the property, but when that’s derailed she’s forced to undertake a desperate odyssey in a city of greed. Lynette has to confront dangerous people who owe her money. On a dangerous odyssey through a single night, Lynette is forced to confront her dark past in order to finally break free.
Night Always Comes is based on the May 17, 2022 Novel by Willy Vlautin. According to Producer Benjamin Caron (From Netflix Tudum):
“The emotional core of the book was my compass, but there’s a heightened sense of immediacy and propulsion to cinema where the audience feels every blow and every betrayal and every hope. The adaptation became even more of a character-driven thriller with Lynette at the center of every frame. I also opened up the book by having Portland itself become a character in the movie, the contrast between the city’s foreclosed buildings and the gentrified neighborhoods reflecting Lynette’s personal crisis.”
“Lynette is driven by a desperate need for security, for the idea of home as much as, I guess, the reality of it. Yet she is haunted by the fear that she doesn’t deserve it. Her journey is a study in propulsion. Each decision, no matter how reckless, is an attempt to outrun her past and carve out a future.”
“Vanessa brings a beautifully wild energy to Lynette, making the character unpredictable and deeply, deeply human. Together, we worked on creating a character who is simply not just reacting to the world, but desperately trying to wrest control of her future, even as she teeters on the edge of self-destruction,” says Caron, who believes Kirby’s contributions as a producer were also invaluable. “Vanessa was creatively involved from the ground up, which was brilliant. To have someone that was both an actor and producer was incredibly exciting to me.”
THE REVIEW:
Night Always Comes is an electrifying urban thriller that hooked me from the opening scene and never let go. Adapted from Willy Vlautin’s novel, the film plunges viewers into a high-stakes, emotionally raw quest as Lynette (Vanessa Kirby) races against the clock to secure her family’s future in a rapidly gentrifying Portland. What I loved about this movie was its tense, ticking-clock atmosphere and urgent pacing; every frame brims with suspense and desperation as Lynette scrambles overnight to raise $25,000, making tough choices and confronting her past. The story beautifully balances grit and empathy, adding layers to its social commentary about housing insecurity and class struggles.
The cast is simply phenomenal. Jennifer Jason Leigh delivers a quietly devastating turn as Lynette’s unreliable mother, Doreen, showing a complexity that deepens every family scene. Zack Gottsagen is moving as Kenny, Lynette’s brother, whose innocence amplifies the stakes and heartbreak, and together, their performances ground the story in vulnerability and hope. But the reason I was truly captivated is Vanessa Kirby. She dominates the screen and brings such emotional urgency, versatility, and empathy to Lynette that I couldn’t look away. Kirby channels every stage of desperation, pain, and resolve with a haunting depth; she’s the beating heart of the film, making every moment memorable. The chemistry among these three, especially Kirby’s dynamic with Gottsagen and Leigh, represents the best of ensemble acting, elevating a tense genre drama into a resonant journey about family and survival.
It is a deep dark social commentary centered on one woman’s struggle to survive and rise above. It is not pretty, it is not a Hallmark movie, It is realism, sadness and desperation at it’s raw core and yet it is the triumph of survival and the eternal hope of a better life.
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