The Night Comes For Us (2018) Review

 The Night Comes For Us (2018) 4.5/10

Hey guys. I’ll make this one short because this movie felt like a waste of time and I’d rather not waste any more time on it. The Night Comes For Us is an Netflix original film that premiered on October 19, 2018 with the director being Timo Tjahjanto. The only reason why I watched this in the first place was because Iko Uwais was in this and he’s one of my favorite actors. Let’s begin.

Our story follows Ito, a Triad member that’s part of the high ranking Six Seas group that helps keep everything in order. While on a mission to destroy a village (some people in this village were stealing from the Triad, so they burned down the whole thing), Ito had a realization that he doesn’t want to do this murder and carnage anymore. The last survivor of this village is a little girl named Reina. Ito kills everyone and rescues the girl, betraying the Triad in the process. Now a wanted man, Ito and Reina must survive the Triad’s onslaught and escape the country. To do this, Ito will need the help of some old friends.

The plot for this movie is not bad at all. It’s how it’s executed that makes it boring. Now, before I go any further, I will be comparing this to other movies that studio XYZ has made (The Raid 1, The Raid 2, and Headshot) that I have seen. Compared to these movies, this movie sucks. Whatever was done in this movie was done infinitely better in The Raid movies, which came out before this. Headshot had better action choreography than this movie as well. Anyway, back to the plot. I didn’t really care for it. It just felt like stuff was happening. No actual story was being told as opposed to the three other films. I didn’t care for the characters. What little character development there was for the side characters and even Ito and Arian (Iko Uwais’ character) felt rushed and just there to fill up the 2 hour time slot. Throughout the whole movie, it tries to build up a relationship between Ito and Reina and it just feels awkward. This type of relationship was done better in The Last of Us (Joel and Ellie) and even Yakuza (Kiryu and Haruka). I know those are games and not movies, but it’s still the same concept.

The action scenes were okay, I guess. Somewhat entertaining, but again, The Raid movies and Headshot did the action choreography better. Not even the final fight between Ito and Arian was cool. They were just throwing each other around with martial arts thrown in. As opposed to the final fight in The Raid 2 (One of the best fights in cinema history), this fight was extremely disappointing. The main thing I took away from these fights was the shock value that these scenes had. Fingers being chopped off, hooks and wires being used. This whole movie was a gore fest. There was even disembowelment near the end. Intestines hanging out and shit.

Cinematography was all over the place. Some scenes looked great. Other scenes look weird. Like near the end when Ito goes to finish things off and he fights all of those guys in the hang out place. The fight starts with the camera situated on Ito’s back. It feels hella awkward and completely out of place. This was never used again. Or other times the camera would constantly keep switching all over the place. No consistency.

Music sucks. All of the tracks do not fit the mood of the fights. The fight with The Operator vs the lesbian Triad chicks had horrible background music. The fight itself was decent but the music just made it bad. This is why I point out good music because the right track can make or break a scene.

Acting is actually decent, to some extent. Joe Taslim (Ito) was pretty good as the main character. Iko Uwais always puts his best with everything he’s in. Everyone else was just there. Completely forgettable performances. Surprisingly, the little girl that played Reina wasn’t annoying, which is good.

I’m probably missing something, but I’m just done with this review. I can not recommend this movie when literally The Raid movies exist. If you want a film similar to what’s here, then go check those out.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.