Tatum Marilyn Hall, left, and Dominique Fishback in Night Comes On (Samuel Goldwyn Films)

Night Comes On has an ostensibly simple premise. A young black woman, just shy of 18, leaves a youth intention center, intent on taking revenge against her father, who she witnessed killing her mother. It’s actually a perfect story line for an exploitation flick, but co-writers Jordana Spiro (also the director) and Angelica Nwandu have something different in mind. They have concocted a deeply felt social drama that quietly simmers with rage while keeping a clear eye on the flaws of its protagonist.  

Wary and world-weary, Angel Lemare (Dominique Fishback) doesn’t have many places to turn to after leaving the facility. She manages to procure a gun from a suburban gun dealer, who nonchalantly suggests sex in payment—this is the world Angel travels in. Spiro and Fishback, in a wholly astonishing performance, don’t sugarcoat the circumstances or the characters caught in them. Angel is the embodiment of skepticism. She doesn’t trust the world, nor should she. When Spiro fixes the camera on her, viewers see a young woman who thinks she’s seen it all and are painfully aware that, in all likeliness, the worse is yet to come. 

She visits her sister, Abby (Tatum Marilyn Hall), in foster care, and Abby convinces her that a) she knows where their father is but b) she doesn’t remember exactly  where he is, and she’ll have to go with Angel to show her. This forms the beating heart of the film. These sisters have experienced too much, and yet their outlooks contrast markedly. Angel is transactional and trusts very few people. As her ex complains, she does not let anyone in. She’s taciturn, and though not ruthless, she does whatever is necessary to survive while giving as little of herself emotionally as she possibly can.  

Abby, on the other hand, is open-hearted and trusting, possibly to a fault. She happily gives her foster mothers the mood-enhancing pills she is supposed to take. The fact she’s prescribed meds at the age of 10 reinforces how little thought or care has gone into the welfare of these kids. She also seems to have forgiven her father, which is a sin Abby cannot abide. There’s a need these two have for each other, as sisters and survivors of trauma, that scares Angel possibly more than confronting her father.   

The last third upends Angel’s expectations, as well as our own, as the story lines refuses the easy ending and forces Angel into making the much harder choice of doing more than just surviving. Spiro is clear-eyed about her character’s flaws but also regarding the forces that brought them to their circumstances. This is social drama as character study. 

Spiro and cinematographer Hatuey Viveros Lavielle gauze the proceedings with an artful luminosity. For such a harsh subject and downtrodden subjects, this is a very good-looking film, yet it never falls into poverty porn. Moments are not gussied up. In many scenes, Lavielle foregrounds Angel in the frame and lets the background go out of focus, heightening Angel’s disconnection with her surroundings. 

Night Comes On is a beautifully shot, powerfully performed film focusing on the lives of two young black girls, one full of life, the other wary of living. Spiro and Nwandu tell their story beautifully in this urgent, necessary film.