The Night Comes for Us (2018)
★★½ — The Night Comes for Us (2018)
There is a moment in certain action films where you realise the filmmakers have genuinely stopped caring about self-imposed limits, and The Night Comes for Us is very much one of those films. Released in 2018 and produced through a joint effort between Indonesian outfit Screenplay Infinite Films and the genre-specialist American company XYZ Films, it arrives with a premise that is, on paper, fairly well-worn: a lethal man operating inside a criminal organisation chooses, on impulse, to protect an innocent child rather than follow orders, and the rest of the film is the world falling in on top of him for making that choice. The tagline, "In search of salvation, he'll make the city rain blood," is not exactly understating things.
The film comes from Timo Tjahjanto, a director who had already established himself as a willing extremist within Indonesian genre cinema, particularly through his horror work, before turning his full attention to action. Here he is operating in a space that Indonesian cinema had made very much its own by the mid-2010s, following the international success of films like The Raid and The Raid 2. The shadow of those films falls fairly obviously over this one, not least because two of their key performers show up here. Joe Taslim, who appeared in the original Raid, takes the lead role of the conflicted Triad enforcer at the centre of everything, and Iko Uwais, the star of both Raid films, appears opposite him in a role that puts the two men on a collision course. Rounding out the principal cast are Julie Estelle, Sunny Pang, and young Asha Kenyeri Bermudez, whose character is the moral hinge on which the entire story turns. With a runtime of just over two hours, Tjahjanto is clearly not in a hurry to get it over with, though whether that running time is a strength or a liability rather depends on your appetite for sustained, relentless mayhem.
The Indonesian action scene had, by 2018, earned a global reputation for choreography and physical commitment that most other national cinemas could not match, and this film is very much a product of that culture. What it does with that foundation, and how satisfying it proves to be as a piece of crime cinema rather than simply as a vehicle for controlled violence, is worth examining. It has been reviewed as part of this site's A-Z World Movie Tour, which has also taken in other Indonesian productions including Tiger Stripes and The Elixir, films that show just how wide a range the country's output covers.
A-Z World Movie Tour Indonesia The most impressive thing about this movie is probably the screenplay. Imagine the mind of someone who can come up with death in so many wild and crazy ways. The plot is pretty basic. Hitman spares child. Mob comes for hitman. It's basically a 2hr bloodbath. It's pretty cool but it does get a little samey. Especially after Raid and Raid2.
That observation about sameness is one I keep coming back to. There is something to be said for a film that commits this fully to its own logic, and Tjahjanto clearly has a genuinely unusual imagination when it comes to staging carnage. But even the most inventive action wears you down if the story underneath it is not doing enough work to give you a reason to care between the set pieces. For me, the Taslim-versus-Uwais dynamic is the film's strongest card, and I wish it had been played a little more carefully. As it stands, The Night Comes for Us is polished but unremarkable as a story, and extraordinary but exhausting as a spectacle. Worth your time if the genre speaks to you. Bring a strong stomach.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2018 | Watched: 2025-06-28
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for The Night Comes for Us (2018) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More with Joe Taslim: The Raid (2011)
More from Indonesia: The Elixir (2025) · The Raid (2011)
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More crime: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Angst (1983) · Stolen Face (1952) · Cairo Station (1958)
