Nightbitch (2024)

Dir: Marielle Heller

Cast: Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Arleigh Snowden, Emmett Snowden, Zoe Chao, Mary Holland, Ella Thomas, Archana Rajan, Jessica Harper

Amy Adams is excellent as an exhausted stay-at-home mother who slowly starts to turn into a dog in Marielle Heller’s hilariously bonkers dark comedy

While the balance is far from there, there is no denying there has been some improvements made in recent years regarding female directors and writers conveying the lengths women have to go to get the level of respect they deserve. As discussed in my review for “The Substance” a couple months ago, most cinematic explorations of female empowerment have come from characters of a younger age, often as a result of their experiences through puberty. Similarly to Coralie Fargeat‘s thought-provoking horror, Marielle Heller‘s latest film “Nightbitch” allows women of a more advanced age to heard.

Adapted from the buzzy 2021 debut novel by Rachel Yoder, “Nightbitch” is a magical realist exploration of motherhood, and while there have been countless iconic movie mums, none have depicted the brutally taxing efforts that mothers have to endure just to keep their little ones alive and out of harms way. It is a refreshing and often comedic change of pace to see the central mother, excellently portrayed as ever by Amy Adams, undergo so much toil as she monotonously repeats the day long cycle of feed-clean-sleep-repeat.

Adams’ character, who is never named, was once a promising artist but has given up her lifelong aspirations to look after her and her husband’s (Scoot McNairy) infant son. With her husband often being away with work, it is up to “Mother” to keep “Son” fed and entertained, the latter of which usually being granted in the form of the mind-numbing children’s play group Book Babies at the local library. It is here where our exhausted mother reluctantly acquaints herself with Jen (Zoe Chao), Miriam (Mary Holland) and Liz (Archana Rajan), three other mothers with whom she shares nothing in common other than having a child of a similar age.

Despite being physically and mentally exhausted from carrying out the majority of the parenting duties, Mother gets very little sympathy from her patronising husband, who constantly reminds her that he would swap his working life in exchange to staying at home with their son all day in a heartbeat. The toll of her husband’s ignorance, as well as the endless sleepless nights, sees something snap inside Mother, as she begins to notice her body changing in increasingly drastic ways. Initially dismissed as side effects of menopause, Mother soon notices that she has a heightened sense of smell, sharp teeth and blonde fur, and after escaping the house one night finds herself running through the streets, fully transformed into a dog.

Having never read Yoder’s novel, I am curious to how these body transformation sequences play out, and how literal they are meant to be taken. In terms of movie’s narrative, Adams’ transformation into the titular “Nightbitch” is clearly metaphorical, with the metamorphosis into a canine representing the more feral side to motherhood – although there are a few signs that it could too be a literal transformation. This outlandish plot point seems to take shape once Adams’ character is handed a mysterious book by sympathetic librarian Norma, played by the great Jessica Harper, the star of one of my all time favourite horror movies, “Suspiria”. Harper’s inclusion is a slight nod to the subtle horror elements in “Nightbitch”, with the body-horror of Adams’s transformation mirroring that of “The Substance”, by having our central protagonist undergo physical changes that remind her of what her body was once like, in this case, before childbirth.

As always, Adams is up for the physical and emotional challenges this role presents, delivering a number of raw, verbal tirades expressing how miserable and drained she is having thrown away her whole lifestyle to raise a child. While these outbursts are often revealed to be that of fantasy, only for Adams’ to smile politely and reassure those around her that she is fine, they vividly spell out the movie’s themes surrounding motherhood without any degree of subtlety. It is often the case that in visual media you are taught to “show, don’t tell”, however, this on-the-nose approach by Heller, who also wrote the script, is in keeping with the movie satirical nature and darkly comedic tone.

While it lacks the nuance of her previous works, “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” (2015), “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” (2018) and “A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood” (2019), Marielle Heller has delivered a disturbingly real, deep-dive into the challenges of parenting. Bolstered by an explosive and daring central performance by Amy Adams, “Nightbitch” is a hilarious and thought-provoking insight into motherhood.

Nightbitch is now showing in UK Cinemas

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