Five great movies that take place at night
When the sun goes down, and the moon comes up… there is plenty of opportunity for adventure and chaos. As ‘Goo Goo Muck’ tells the tale of a horny teenager hoping to get lucky after dark, using horror imagery to communicate the visceral nature of the subject’s need for “something that is nice to eat,” the song encapsulates the potential terrors and excitement that can be found when night falls.
Throughout cinema, many filmmakers have chosen to use nighttime as a backdrop for their movies, allowing the darkness to provide the perfect setting for illicit behaviour and activities. From affairs and secrecy to violence and murder, you never know who you might bump into on the streets after the day has ended or where the night might take you.
By condensing the action within a film to just one night, filmmakers allow audiences to understand how much drama can really unfold over the course of a short period of time. For many of us, as soon as the moon is visible in the sky, it’s time to wind down and get ready for bed, but in these films, the events begin while the rest of the world is asleep.
So, here are five films that predominantly take place at night, from modern comedies to old French classics.
Five movies that only happen at night:
After Hours (Martin Scorsese, 1985)
One of Martin Scorsese’s less celebrated films – yet one that is worth watching – is After Hours. Arriving after the box office flop The King of Comedy, After Hours also failed to gain a significant profit. Still, the film is now considered an underrated gem, with the movie playing out over one disastrous night that starts out with Paul, played by Griffin Dunne, meeting a woman, Marcy, in a cafe.
Later in the evening, he rings her and heads to her apartment in a taxi, only to lose the cash he needs to pay for transportation. Thus, his night continually falls apart as he encounters various people and finds himself stuck in humorous situations. It’s a great comedy that is also visually fantastic, featuring vivid shots of New York illuminated at night.
Bodies, Bodies, Bodies (Halina Reijn, 2022)
Bodies, Bodies, Bodies is the perfect movie to watch at night with a group of friends, although you should perhaps avoid playing the titular game that causes murder and deceit among the characters. We follow a group of twenty-somethings as they gather in their friend’s large house during a hurricane, where a combination of drugs, alcohol, spiky personalities, and a game that requires the lights to be turned off, results in a tragedy that unfurls over the course of one night.
The movie is a funny satire on the younger generation’s obsession with technology, with plenty of modern slang and references making the movie feel like an apt time capsule of today. It takes a unique look at class, too, wrapping these themes up in an accessible and fun hour-and-a-half of mystery, comedy, and slasher horror.
Lift to the Scaffold (Louis Malle, 1958)
Emerging shortly before the French New Wave boom, Louis Malle’s Lift to the Scaffold (or Elevator to the Gallows as it is also known) mainly takes place one night when a couple’s murderous plan goes horribly wrong. After Jeanne Moreau’s Florence and Maurice Ronet’s Julien decide to kill Florence’s husband so they can be together, Julien almost successfully stages the murder as a suicide – that’s until he gets stuck in the lift.
An opportunistic teenager and his girlfriend then steal his car and engage in some seemingly harmless racing with another car. However, the pair soon end up in trouble as events turn sour. With a beautiful jazz score courtesy of Miles Davis and striking black-and-white cinematography that makes Paris look even more beautiful in the dark, Malle’s film is one of the greatest to unravel over one night.
Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May, 1976)
Proving himself to be more than just a groundbreaking filmmaker, John Cassavetes gives a brilliant performance as Nicky in Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky from 1976. Alongside Peter Falk, the pair play old friends who band together after a hitman tries to kill Nicky. The movie is a fascinating exploration of male friendship that only a female director could capture so strikingly and empathetically.
Breaking down masculinity over the course of the friends’ night together, the movie is gritty and honest, with May allowing Mikey and Nicky to connect – and disconnect. It’s not a happy film, suggesting that all it takes is one night for everything to fall apart. While the movie performed badly at the box-office, it is now considered one of the greatest films of the 1970s.
Night on Earth (Jim Jarmusch, 1991)
We can always trust Jim Jarmusch to make a film that plays with convention, and with Night on Earth, he used the concept of one night as the starting point, taking the audience across continents to explore interactions between a taxi driver and their passengers. For example, in Los Angeles, we meet Winona Ryder, the driver, and Gena Rowlands, her passenger, as they connect in spite of their lives, which are worlds apart.
The film also takes us to New York, Helsinki, Rome, and Paris, allowing the viewer to study the kinds of interactions that only happen out of chance and necessity, such as when using a taxi, uniting people of different classes and opinions. With a great soundtrack by Tom Waits, Night on Earth is one of Jarmusch’s most thought-provoking films.
