TL;DR (For My Dubai Skimmers):
Vanessa Kirby shines in a relentlessly grim Netflix drama about housing desperation and class warfare. It’s stylish and urgent, but weighed down by too much trauma and not enough nuance.

When you live in a city like Dubai—where skyline ambition meets bone-deep inequality—you develop a sixth sense for class tension. I see it in the shadows of glass towers, in the Uber driver who hasn’t been home in years, in the cleaner who’s mopping floors at 11 PM while influencers sip $30 lattes. So when I hit play on Night Always Comes, Netflix’s latest anxiety grenade of a drama starring Vanessa Kirby, I was already primed for the emotional gut punch.

But this movie doesn’t just punch—it pummels.

A Race Against Capitalism

Set in a grim, rain-soaked version of Portland, Oregon (but spiritually very much anywhere struggling to stay afloat), the film unfolds over one frantic 24-hour period. Lynette, played with bruised, volcanic intensity by Kirby, is trying to come up with $25,000 to buy the crumbling home she shares with her mother and disabled brother before it gets swallowed by gentrification’s gleaming jaws.

It’s an exhausting sprint: favors called in, debts collected, sketchy deals made. At first, it plays like a social thriller—Uncut Gems for the working class. But as Lynette’s desperation veers into increasingly implausible territory—drug deals, sex work, old flames with menacing eyes—the script loses its grip on reality.

I don’t mind when movies bend logic to make a point. But Night Always Comes doesn’t bend—it snaps.

Vanessa Kirby: Running on Rage

Let’s be clear: Kirby is phenomenal here. She plays Lynette with a haunted physicality, as if her body’s been holding in a scream for years. There’s no glamour, no forced likability. She’s messy, impulsive, infuriating—and real. It’s a portrait of female rage not as empowerment fantasy, but survival instinct.

The problem is that the film doesn’t know what to do with her. Every time Lynette starts to feel like a fully realized person, the movie piles on more trauma. Abuse, betrayal, self-harm, economic ruin—it’s all here, and it’s relentless. What begins as a grounded struggle morphs into a misery parade. By the end, I wasn’t moved. I was numb.

Aesthetic Grit, Narrative Fatigue

Director Benjamin Caron (The Crown, Sharper) brings moody, noir-tinged style to the chaos. Portland is rendered like a decaying noir city: all neon gutters and cracked pavement. There’s real craft here. The editing is tight, the pacing nervy—especially in the first half. But then the film starts substituting pain for depth, and momentum slips into melodrama.

Supporting characters—played by Julia Fox, Eli Roth, Michael Kelly, and a grim-faced Jennifer Jason Leigh—drift in and out like NPCs in Lynette’s personal hellscape. Few of them land. Only Stephan James, as a sympathetic ex-con co-worker, gives Kirby someone to bounce off meaningfully.

When Realism Becomes Emotional Exhaustion

Look, I get it. The film wants to say something urgent about class, desperation, and the myth of the American Dream. And I applaud Netflix for financing stories that don’t involve space wizards or serial killers for once. But there’s a difference between making us feel the weight of injustice and just dropping a piano on our heads.

Lynette’s story never evolves. It just darkens. You don’t get catharsis—just exhaustion. And coming from a city where we’re taught to hustle through everything, I found myself craving a little more why, not just more what now?

Final Verdict

Night Always Comes is a hard-edged, emotionally raw thriller that starts with promise but ends up drowning in its own trauma. Vanessa Kirby is astonishing—feral, fearless—but the film around her becomes too implausible, too punishing to land the gut punch it’s aiming for. It’s important, yes. But is it impactful? Not quite.