Like most things in life, motherhood can be exceptionally thankless. We all have mothers and we all owe so much to our mothers, but so rarely do they actually get the appreciation that they truly deserve. In the past few years, this feeling has come to a boiling point in cinema, resulting in films about motherhood and the female experience both as dramatic works (“Gone Girl”), broad comedies (“Barbie (2023)”), and even intense body horror (“The Substance”). Now writer/director Marielle Heller (“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”) has adapted Rachel Yoder’s novel of female and motherly rage and dissent for the big screen with none other than Amy Adams (“Enchanted,” Arrival”) in the leading role. Together they tell the tale of “Nightbitch.”
The film follows an unnamed woman referred to as Mother, played by Adams, who, after years of being an artist, left her job to become a stay-at-home mother for her newborn Son. While her Husband, played by Scoot McNairy (“Killing Them Softly,” “Halt & Catch Fire”), spends his weeks away working, she becomes increasingly frustrated with her new life, and eventually begins to notice changes to her body and physicality that lead her to believe she is transforming into a dog at night.
It’s quite the wild concept for a director who’s stuck to low stakes work up until now. Even for the handful of more bizarre moments in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” it was still a very grounded, realistic film. That’s not the case for “Nightbitch,” nor should it be. However, Heller seems to be trying to reign the story in far more than one would expect. The material begs for a larger-than-life outlandishness, and while Adams’s performance gets there plenty of times, the film as a whole feels like it’s holding back its wilder aspects. There could be any number of reasons why, but it makes the film itself seem far more toothless than it could be. What it results in is a feature-length “Twilight Zone” episode rather than a fully featured take on this modern marvel of a novel.
Adams is, again, totally fantastic. She throws herself into this performance and it results in her straddling the line between being endearingly outlandish and meek. It’s a lot of fun to watch, even though it does feel like she could sleepwalk through material like this given her immense talent. McNairy is good but finds himself shackled to a more routine portrait of a dimwitted husband. His evolution as the film progresses is interesting and earned, but he does get far less to work with than Adams does. The supporting cast of mothers of Jen, Miriam, and Liza, played by Zoë Chao (“The Afterparty,” “Where’d You Go Bernadette?”), Mary Holland (“Happiest Season,” “The Big Door Prize”), and Archana Rajan (“Fairfield”) respectively, adds some great banter to the film, but their few scenes with Adams are so good, they feel underutilized.
Likewise, a borderline cameo from Jessica Harper (“Phantom of the Paradise,” “Suspiria (1977)”) as Norma feels like it could be the emotional crux of the film, but Heller just doesn’t do anything with her, leaving a potentially interesting angle unused. On a similiar note, the film features flashbacks to Mother’s own mother when she was a young girl. It’s clear that there is a throughline here with her own transformations and emotional journey, but it feels like it’s missing something. It’s as if the film was originally two-hours and when it was cut to 100 minutes, those remaining scenes were the ones that went.
Heller’s approach to the material might be a bit too pedestrian, but there’s still plenty of snark and commentary within it all. The film has constant asides by Adams that don’t so much break the fourth wall as they exist outside of her own mind. She plays these moments well, effectively splicing up the “real” version of herself and her internal monologue. These breaks in reality also help to reinforce the weirdness and grossness that is throughout. Without spoiling anything, there are moments of body horror that, while they’re not necessarily extreme, do break the viewer out of the routine world Heller and Adams have built. It also reinforces the themes of motherhood and power, given how normal Mother views some of these events.
“Nightbitch” is certainly an interesting idea, and Heller and Adams work to craft as interesting of a version of this film as they can. Unfortunately, it's a film that feels as though it wants to have its steak and eat it too. Too weird for an average housewife viewing audience and not weird enough to be devoured by genre fans, “Nightbitch” is certainly a film with a lot on its mind that wants to commit. It ends up stumbling and becoming a far more pedestrian version of this kind of tale, led by a fantastic Amy Adams who unfortunately can’t save it as a whole. 3/5
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