"Night Always Comes" is a 2025 American crime thriller drama film directed by Benjamin Caron from a script by Sarah Conradt, adapting the 2021 novel The Night Always Comes by Willy Vlautin. Set in Portland, Oregon, Vanessa Kirby stars as Lynette, a working-class woman who shares a little house with her mother Doreen (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and her only brother, Kenny (Zach Robin Gottsagen), a thirty-something who has Down syndrome and can't live alone. As gentrification makes their neighborhood unaffordable and they face eviction, Lynette plunges into a desperate and increasingly dangerous all-night search to raise $25,000. On a dangerous odyssey through a single night, she is forced to confront her dark past in order to finally break free. This Netflix film shows what happens when poverty and family dysfunction push someone to their absolute breaking point.
Gentrification is when wealthier people move into working-class neighborhoods, causing property values and rents to rise so much that longtime residents can no longer afford to live there. It's a major issue in cities like Portland, and the film uses Lynette's desperate situation to show how gentrification can destroy families and communities by pricing them out of their own neighborhoods.
The Plot
The movie is about a woman named Lynette who lives in Portland with her mom Doreen and her older brother Kenny, who has Down syndrome. Lynette works multiple jobs, including being an escort, and she's desperately trying to keep their childhood home by buying it from their landlord. They need $25,000 for the down payment, and today is the day they're supposed to go to the bank and sign the papers.
But when Lynette gets home, she discovers something terrible - her mom spent all $25,000 on a brand new car instead of saving it for the house. Lynette is shocked and angry because now they might lose their home forever. Her mom doesn't even seem to care that much, which makes Lynette even more upset.
So Lynette decides she has to get that money back somehow, and she only has one night to do it. First, she goes to see Scott, a man who used to pay her for escort services. She asks him to lend her the money, but he says no. Even though he refuses, she still sleeps with him, and he pays her $1,000 instead of the usual $500. When Scott accidentally leaves his car keys behind, Lynette takes his fancy Mercedes car, thinking maybe she can sell it or use it somehow.
Next, she goes to her friend Gloria, who also works as an escort and is dating a senator. Gloria owes Lynette $3,000 but won't pay it back. She only gives Lynette $500 from a safe in the apartment. Lynette is frustrated because that's still not nearly enough money.
Lynette then asks Cody, a guy she works with at a bar who used to be in prison, to help her break into Gloria's safe to get more money. Cody agrees to help for $400, but says they have to take the safe somewhere else to open it. They drive across town to meet Cody's friend who tries to break open the safe with a big hammer.
When they finally get it open, they find cash, expensive watches called Rolexes, and bags of cocaine (illegal drugs). The man with the hammer gets angry and threatens Lynette, so she hits him with a tool to defend herself, and she and Cody run away with the money and drugs.
They count the money at a diner, but Lynette is still $6,000 short of what she needs. She decides to try selling Scott's stolen car and picks up her brother Kenny to bring him along. But when they find the car, Cody betrays her and tries to take all the money and drugs for himself. Lynette gets so angry that she hits him with her car, grabs the bag of money back, but leaves him the car keys.
Kenny is scared and upset by all this violence, but Lynette convinces him they need to stick together as a family. She takes him to get pancakes and explains that she's doing all this to keep their home.
Late at night, Lynette goes to see Tommy, her ex-boyfriend who forced her to become an escort when she was only 16 years old. Tommy is a really bad person who hurt Lynette when she was young. She asks him to help her sell the cocaine for $3,000. He says he knows someone who might buy it, but when Lynette confronts him about how he hurt her when she was a teenager, he tells her to never contact him again.
The person who wants to buy the drugs is named Blake, and he lives in a fancy house where he's having a party. But Blake is also a bad person - he tries to force Lynette to have sex with him for part of the money. Lynette fights back and hits him over the head. Everyone at the party gets angry and tries to hold her down. She falls through a glass table and gets cut up, but she manages to find Kenny and they escape from the house.
By the time they get home, it's almost morning. Lynette is bleeding from the glass cuts, and her mom helps clean her wounds. But then her mom drops another bomb - she tells Lynette she never wanted to buy the house anyway. She'd rather see it "burn down" than live there with Lynette.
This leads to a huge fight between Lynette and her mom. Lynette is heartbroken because she risked everything trying to save their home, only to find out her mom didn't even want it. Her mom blames Lynette for all their problems and says Lynette has always been trouble. Lynette asks why her mom never protected her from Tommy's abuse when she was 16, but her mom just says mean things and tells her that she and Kenny are moving in with a neighbor named Mona.
Then David, the landlord, calls to say he sold the house to someone else who offered more money. He's tired of giving Lynette's family extra chances.
In the end, Lynette realizes she can't save her family or fix their problems. She leaves some money and a note for her mom, says goodbye to Kenny (telling him she loves him and will visit), and drives away to start a new life somewhere else.
How the Movie Compares to the Book
The Netflix movie makes some big changes from Willy Vlautin's 2021 book. The biggest difference is how long the story takes: the book happens over 48 hours (two days and nights), but the movie squeezes everything into just one night. This makes the movie feel faster and more intense.
The movie also focuses more on Lynette - she's in almost every scene. The filmmakers used real Portland locations to show how the city is changing and pushing out working-class families like Lynette's.
The book gives readers more time to understand the characters and think about their problems. It spends more time explaining how poverty and money troubles affect people's lives. The book also talks more about politics and how hard life is for working-class people.
Readers also get more of Lynette's backstory, her troubled family dynamics, and her lifelong struggles with trust, poverty, and mental health. Vlautin also spends more time exploring the politics behind gentrification, the crushing weight of debt, and the way the working poor are trapped by systems beyond their control.
The movie is more like an action thriller, focusing on all the dangerous things Lynette does in one crazy night. Both the book and movie tell the same basic story about a desperate woman trying to save her family's home, but the book is slower and deeper while the movie is faster and more exciting. The movie's one-night timeline makes everything feel more urgent and scary.
My Review
Watching this movie made me feel really sad and uncomfortable, like I was watching someone's life fall apart in real time. Vanessa Kirby, who plays Lynette, does a great job showing how desperate and exhausted her character is, but the whole experience is just heartbreaking.
The story shows how when people are really poor and desperate, they sometimes make terrible choices that only make things worse. Lynette keeps trying to fix her family's problems, but everything she does backfires. She steals, lies, and hurts people, thinking she's helping her family, but it just creates more trouble.
What makes the movie even sadder is that Lynette's mom is awful to her. Instead of being grateful that her daughter is trying so hard to keep their home, she blames Lynette for everything and basically abandons her. The mom spent their house money on a car she didn't need, then acts like it's Lynette's fault when everything goes wrong.
The movie also shows how people can be really cruel to each other. Tommy, who hurt Lynette when she was just a teenager, doesn't care about the damage he caused. The people Lynette tries to get money from are selfish and mean. Even her own mom treats her badly.
But here's what bothered me about the movie: by the end, it seems like we're supposed to think Lynette leaving her family behind is a good thing - like she's finally "taking care of herself". But that doesn't feel right to me. Her brother Kenny, who has Down syndrome, loves her and needs her. Her mom is irresponsible and can't take care of him properly. It feels wrong that Lynette just gives up and leaves them.
The movie tries to be realistic about poverty and family problems, but it's so depressing that it's hard to watch. There's no hope or happiness anywhere in the story. Even when Lynette finally gets the money she needs, it doesn't matter because everything else has fallen apart.
Some people might like this movie because it shows real problems that families face, like not having enough money, dealing with addiction, and family members who don't support each other. The acting is good, especially Vanessa Kirby and Jennifer Jason Leigh (who plays the mom).
But honestly, I left feeling like I'd watched someone's worst day ever, and there was no lesson or hope to take away from it. The movie seems to say that sometimes families are too broken to fix, and the only solution is to walk away. That might be realistic, but it doesn't make for a very satisfying story.
It's well-made and the acting is good, but it's so sad and hopeless that I can't recommend it unless you specifically like really depressing movies about family problems and poverty.
Watch on Netflix