I love movies that make me think, but there’s a thin line between challenging and pretentious. Petersen Vargas’s Some Nights I Feel Like Walking dances right on that edge. At times, it feels like the most self-important film I’ve seen all year, demanding more from its audience than it gives back. Yet, even with its flaws, it delivers flashes of brilliance that linger long after the credits roll.
I appreciate when a filmmaker trusts the audience to put the pieces together. When I watched Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow, I left wondering what was going on. Later, I learned it was about being trans, and it all made sense. The same thing happened with Luca Guadagnino’s Queer. After learning about the novella it was based on, I appreciated the film even more.
So, when Vargas’s Some Nights came along, I was ready for a mind-bending experience. I gave him a chance even after being unimpressed with his first queer film, 2 Cool 2 Be 4gotten, and the divisive A Very Good Girl.
The film drops us into the night with Zion (Miguel Odron), a runaway cushioned by privilege but restless enough to bolt. He drifts toward a pack of boys who survive by selling desire on Manila’s streets, haunting dark cinemas and cheap rooms.
Halfway through Some Nights, Vargas makes a sharp turn from a grounded beginning into a surreal scene clearly meant to spark thought. While the fantastical elements in I Saw the TV Glow or Queer feel earned, those in Some Nights do not. The film struggles to tie a promising first act to a one-shot finale that looks made to impress but comes off like a stylistic stunt with nothing behind it. Although I love a good long take, the camerawork constantly reminded me that I was watching a performance of filmmaking, not a genuine piece of storytelling. Even so, I have to admit that Zion’s polarizing dream sequences are a welcome attempt to pull us inside his head so we experience his confusion and fear firsthand in a world that barely notices him.
This focus on style over substance is also seen in the film’s approach to its characters. It introduces figures with compelling backstories only to abandon their potential and reduce them to mere plot devices. The clearest example is Zion. The film gives us fragments of his past — bruises hinting at abuse and a later revelation that he’s the son of a general — but never fully explores his inner life. As a result, Zion often feels more like a vessel for narrative tension than a fully realized character. Ge (Gold Aceron) suffers a similar fate. Every time the body bag carrying him looks unconvincing, it turns grief into a prop that weakens a moment that should have landed emotionally.
Vargas paints Recto in neon lights, shadowed alleys, and sudden moments of danger, but in Some Nights, you don’t really get to know the men who live there. The film is more interested in showing these boys finding connection and “love in a hopeless place” than in exploring what life is actually like for the sex workers hustling through those streets. It’s a missed opportunity, because Recto itself could have been a fully realized world instead of just a backdrop for a story about longing and desire.
Yet, the tension between its failures and its triumphs is what makes this movie so memorable. Its highs often overpower its lows, and that’s especially true in its powerful use of fire. Here, fire becomes a central image that shows how the very thing we fear can also be what makes us feel most alive — alive enough to leave comfort behind in search of a place that might finally feel like ours.
This same tension between danger and survival comes through in one of the film’s most searing moments, when Uno (Jomari Angeles) refuses to take Ge to the hospital after a drug overdose. His decision is born of a chilling practicality forged in a city where turning to the authorities is a greater threat than a drug overdose. Uno knows the system will abandon them and treat their grief as nothing more than a spectacle.
Some Nights I Feel Like Walking will tempt you to walk out early, yet its messy, captivating brilliance carries you to the end even when the characters no longer hold your sympathy.