Get excited, because a new thriller film has landed on Netflix. Night Always Comes tells the story of Lynette (Vanessa Kirby) who has 24 hours to pull together enough money to save her family’s home. Her mother Doreen unhelpfully spent the required $25,000 downpayment on a car. The ending of Night Always Comes is pretty sudden (and sad). Thankfully, the cast of Night Always Comes has shed some light on the deeper meaning behind the ending.
Vanessa Kirby has explained she sees the Netflix film as a study of her character’s self-sabotage. She told Tudum: “The film is very much about how one bad decision leads to another and another and another. She makes some bad choices, but not because she’s intending to. In fact, she’s actually intending to only do something good. I think we can all relate to those choices you make in certain sudden impulsive moments in life, and hers happen to be intensely packed into one night.”
Throughout the night, Lynette really grafts to get this money for her family. She reaches out to people who might be able to help her find the money. At each stage, she has to confront a painful aspect of her past. But none of these plans ever come to anything. The more she tries to help her family, the more of a mess she creates.
The ending scenes of the film is supposed to mirror the beginning. Despite all Lynette’s adventures, she ends up pretty much exactly where she started – arguing with her mother. This reflects how Lynette has always been trapped in a pattern of self-destruction, unable to move forward with her life.
It turns out that Doreen deliberately sabotaged the property deal, and the home will be sold to someone else. Doreen and Lynette’s brother want to move in with a friend – but without Lynette.
Lynette’s decision to literally drive away from her family isn’t supposed to wrong. It’s supposed to make the point that you can’t help other people if you don’t help yourself first. Or, to “put the oxygen mask on first,” as Vanessa Kirby told Forbes.
The director Benjamin Caron explained: “In the end, Lynette’s greatest moral act is to finally choose herself, to break the cycle of self-destruction that has defined her life. I think for the first time, she steps into the unknown with a sense of agency. She’s learned that salvation is not found in a house or a relationship, but in the radical act of caring for herself.”
Night Always Comes is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news and drops, like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.
