The economy is struggling: rents are high, goods are expensive, and securing a rental home is nearly impossible, let alone buying property. The poor American citizens are suffering. The job market, too, is not very promising. According to a podcast that Lynette (played by Vanessa Kirby) listens to while driving, a job that once paid well enough to afford a penthouse now pays very little. Lynette likely tunes into such podcasts to reassure herself that she isn't the only one facing financial difficulties; many others are also grappling with this challenging economy. This is why Lynette fights for her house — she doesn't want to live in her car or on the streets. To keep her home, she simply needs to sign some loan papers and pay $25,000 to avoid eviction. Having a house also means that the concerned authorities won't be able to separate Lynette from Kenny (Zack Gottsagen). Kenny is her brother, and he has Down syndrome, but he's also the warmest, sweetest character in the film. What's the problem, though? What or who is stopping Lynette from having the house in her possession? Blame the mommy dearest, Doreen (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who would rather spend $25,000 on a car than on the house her daughter desperately wants to acquire. Well, Doreen indeed pays $25,000 for a car instead of signing the loan papers. Lynette gets irritated and, once she understands that Doreen won't help her in any way, she sets out on a mission to raise the money herself.
And so the script written by Sarah Conradt (the movie is adapted from Willy Vlautin's novel The Night Always Comes) sends Lynette from one tense situation to another tense situation. She asks a client, Scott (Randall Park), for help, but he shoots down her request by saying he only wants to use her for "pleasure" (he takes her upstairs for sex and leaves her $1000). Lynette steals his Mercedes, goes to a friend to ask for the $3000 that she spent on her bail, but gets only $500 after much emotional blackmail. So Lynette "borrows" the friend's safe (it belongs to her boyfriend), and to break it open, she contacts her co-worker Cody (Stephan James) for assistance. Cody takes her to a man who is an expert at breaking lockers, and we get a tense confrontation between the on-screen characters when the man persistently inquires about the safe. Night Always Comes has more such confrontations (another one arrives when Lynette sells cocaine to Blake [Eli Roth]), but these moments end before things can become actually ugly or serious. Director Benjamin Caron, who made the underappreciated Sharper, surprisingly displays no real talent for crafting thrilling sequences. Just when we prepare to hold our breaths, he releases his grip by cutting to the next scene, the next moment. Night Always Comes is ruined by premature climaxes. As a thriller, it's a bum that never injects you with an adrenaline rush. As a drama, it's not a winner either, considering that the issue of economic crises and Lynette's personal and financial situations are filtered through the narrow gaze of a genre that's preoccupied with delivering edge-of-the-seat pleasures — pleasures that, anyway, never come to the surface. This is, ultimately, not even a mechanically efficient plot machine, but an impersonal Netflix product that merely generates some viewing hours figures. Night always comes all right, but so do mediocre Netflix thrillers that are fated to be forgotten. This is one of those unmemorable thrillers.
Final Score- [3.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times