Night Comes On

Night Comes On is a surprisingly gentle film given the plot. And I’m pretty sure that gentleness and sensitivity is the point of the film. It’s certainly a unique take on a story about revenge. While I respect this take, because of my own personal preferences, I did find myself wishing for a little more drama in Night Comes On.

Lead character Angel begins the film aging out of juvenile detention. She has no family to go back to and plans to stay with her girlfriend, Maya. Angel’s mother is dead, and her father was the one who killed her. Now that Angel’s out of juvenile detention, she has two major goals. The first is to reconnect and ideally, achieve custody of her 10 year-old sister, Abby. Her second goals is to acquire a gun and take revenge on her father.

Night Comes On has enough WLW content to qualify for this site, but only barely. This story is very much not about Angel’s sexuality or romantic relationships. We hear references in a few scenes to her girlfriend, Maya. Maya only appears in person in one scene. This scene establishes that Angel’s not really in a place to be someone’s girlfriend and Maya’s presence in the film ceases after this scene.

Instead, the core relationship in the film is between Angel and Abby. Angel tries to keep Abby separate from her plans of revenge, but isn’t able to do so. As the film goes on, it becomes a case where her desire for revenge and her desire to care for her sister aren’t able to co-exist. Abby comes to represent a hopeful future for Angel, while her father and her quest for revenge represent her troubled past.

Night Comes On has no incidental music and a realistic style of filming. This isn’t a movie that offers you big, dramatic moments. Lots of major plot points and information about Angel come in scenes involving a fairly flat affectation. Especially when Angel has to deal with the system, such as her parole officer. The film is great at showing that despite efforts and even passion from employees, this system meant to help youth is frequently dehumanizing in its bureaucracy. Angel is just another name on a page to these adults, and they have hundreds of other cases just like her. Even within this more gentle, realistic film, there’s still a focus on how many ways the system fails Angel, Abby and people like them.

The climax of the film is Angel confronting her father. And this is really where my desire for more drama comes in. Night Comes On’s underplaying of moments that in any other movie would be overly dramatized is admirable. It makes the film feel not exploitative or salacious, which many films with similar subject matter end up as. But I wanted more from this confrontation. It all builds up to this. This terrible choice Angel makes, with the strength of emotions many of us can’t fully grasp. And what it culminates in is a very short, clipped scream of rage from Angel. After that, she’s under control again and the scene moves on. While this reaction is in tone with the rest of the film, I personally longed for a more dramatic climax that might offer more catharsis.

Night Comes On is unusual in how sensitively it treats this story of criminal youth and revenge. And there’s something extremely admirable there. But when it comes down to personal preference, I’ve never been one for subtlety. The choice to be gentle and sensitive is a unique choice, and one executed well. But it’s not exactly a risky choice. As much as there are numerous ways an injection of drama could make Night Comes On worse, there are also ways which if done correctly, could’ve taken the movie from good to great. At least in my point of view as someone who’s allergic to subtlety.

Overall rating: 6.7/10

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