Netflix film “Night Always Comes”, which was released a few days ago, is a relentlessly bleak mix between character drama and noir thriller, which is mainly driven by the sheer human desperation of its flawed heroine. You may not like her that much even in the end, but the movie understands her growing desperation without making any excuse on her choices and actions along the story, and that keeps us engaged in her increasingly urgent circumstance before the story eventually arrives at its expected ending.

The movie opens with its heroine beginning another hard day of her difficult daily life. Lynette (Vanessa Kirby) has lived with her mother Doreen (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and her handicapped older brother Kenny (Zack Gottsagen) in their old family house for a while since she left behind her wild and problematic past, but they are now on the verge on losing their house due to their ongoing financial difficulty, and Lynette hopes that she can buy back the house from a local real estate businessman via the money saved by her mother for years.

Unfortunately, there comes an unexpected trouble for Lynette at the last minute. Dorren suddenly decides to spend all of that money for buying a new car for herself, and, to Lynette’s frustration and exasperation, she is quite adamant about this impulsive decision of hers. As a consequence, Lynette must find any possible way to get no less than $25,000 before that real estate businessman eventually changes his mind in the next morning.

Needless to say, there is not anyone around her who will willingly borrow such a substantial amount of money to her, so Lynette has no choice but to resort to her old ways of earning money in the past. Besides doing the two jobs, she has also earned some extra money via working as a private prostitute for some affluent dude just for making ends meet for her family, so she naturally pleads to him when they meet later in the evening, but, not so surprisingly, he is mostly interested in getting a moment of pleasure from her.

Lynette subsequently goes to an old colleague of hers who owed her a lot in their past, but her old colleague does not care much about her desperate circumstance from the very beginning, mainly because, well, she is mostly occupied with how she earns and lives day by day. Sure, she is having a much better life compared to Lynette at present, but her current status can be easily lost at any chance as depending on the generosity of her No.1 client who incidentally lets her live in his luxurious apartment, and it goes without saying that helping Lynette is the last thing she wants to do right now.

Becoming all the more desperate than before, Lynette is more determined to get the money by any means necessary, and that is where the story goes into darker territories. She later recruits a young black man who is one of her co-workers at one of her two workplaces, just because she assumes that he has a particular set of skills she needs right now. Although he turns out to be not much of help, he suggests that they should go to someone who can actually help them, and she has no choice but to follow his suggestion.

As Lynette tumbles into the seedy and dangerous world of criminals along with her unlikely accomplice, we get to know a bit more about her and her past. It is apparent that she was once quite a messy walking trouble to herself as well as many others around her including her family, but she really wants to do the right thing for her family, and that makes her keep going even while she finds herself driven to do a number of bad things for her ultimate goal.

In the meantime, we also come to sense more of the grim economic desperation of her and her family and many others in the city. While the local radio programs frequently talk about how things are really bad for many people out there, the movie often shows numerous homeless people here and there in the city, and we come to feel more of how easily Lynette and her family life can tumble into such a gloomy living condition like that at any chance.

The movie, which is based on the novel of the same name by Willy Vlautin, is constantly depressing to watch, but it remains engaging thanks to not only the competent direction of director/co-producer Benhamin Caron (He has been mainly known for directing several episodes of the acclaimed Netflix drama series “The Crown”, by the way) but also the strong lead performance of Vanessa Kirby, who has been quite prominent since her Emmy-nominated supporting turn in “The Crown”. Never overlooking many human flaws of her character, Kirby also conveys well to us her character’s accumulating anxiety and conflict along the narrative, and we come to care more about whatever may happen next, even while observing her character from the distance.

The supporting performers around Kirby are mostly solid on the whole. While Jennifer Jason Leigh is allowed to show her edgy character’s human sides later in the story, Zack Gottsagen, who was unforgettable in “The Peanut Butter Falcon” (2019), holds his own small place well as Lynette’s older brother afflicted with Down syndrome, and Stephan James is also effective in his substantial supporting part. In case of Julia Fox, Randall Park, Michael Kelly, and Eli Roth, they look and feel as sleazy as required by their respective supporting roles, and Kelly is particularly good during his single scene with Kirby. Although their characters do not say a lot about their unpleasant past, they ably express it via their strained interactions on the screen, and that is more than enough for us.

On the whole, “Night Always Comes” can be regarded as your average poverty thriller flick, but it is a competent genre piece which distinguishes itself to some degree via good mood and performance. Although I must point out that what eventually occurs in the end did not surprise me a lot, the movie held my attention up to that point, and I guess I should not grumble for now.