All bark, little bite: Nightbitch, and other horror films that don’t hit as hard as their source novels. Spoilers ahead…
NB: The following contains spoilers for Nightbitch, Let The Right One In and its remake Let Me In, and Stephen King’s novel Cujo and its 1983 film adaptation.
In a cinematic landscape where most trailers give away so much of the plot, it’s almost refreshing that the Nightbitch teaser pales as a lighthearted version of this motherhood tale.
Now that writer-director Marielle Heller’s latest has hit cinemas, moviegoers will be surprised to discover there is more meat to the intriguing elevator pitch of a new mum morphing into a dog. In the adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s 2021 novel of the same name, Amy Adams (who also serves as producer) portrays a stay-at-home mother who gives up her art job and undergoes a surreal physical transformation amid her postpartum struggles.
Yet, when compared to its source material, Nightbitch – which features Yoder as executive producer – is occasionally more akin to a handbag puppy than a mauling machine.
On my first watch, I was enthralled by Adams’ commitment to the role when a woman beside me broke the spell. A mother of a boy with special needs, she wasn’t as impressed with the movie as those who raucously roared throughout, myself included.
Her nonchalance shifted something in me that solidified when reading Yoder’s book. The adaption emerges as a restrained, tame version of the shockingly great film it could’ve been; its mild, polished tone is simply more apparent to those whose routine has at any point resembled that of the unnamed Mother.
Read more: Nightbitch review | All bark, very little bite
Like Nightbitch herself, the film escapes definition. Heller’s fourth feature encompasses dark comedy and body horror, though the latter is gradually abandoned after a couple of hair and pus scenes in favour of some hefty exposition.
As is often the case with first-person narrator adaptations, voice-overs are a sound trick to convey the protagonist’s innermost world. Nightbitch’s unfiltered thoughts accompanying her more polite, socially acceptable responses deliver the laughs but double down on the ‘tell, don’t show’ to the detriment of the overall rhythm.
While it indulges in overly explanatory segments to do justice to Yoder’s writing, Nightbitch chooses to drift from the book in one major way.
The novel’s violence is significantly toned down in the film. Not only is one of its most controversial scenes regarding Nightbitch’s cat executed in less gruesome detail, but the finale also risks unravelling the notion of motherhood as a brutal, body-and-life-altering experience.
There are certainly positive elements in Heller’s movie. Adams’ performance manages to be silly and soft while making infuriating points about how gender and class play into the motherhood myth of ‘having it all’.
Heller’s script taps into the book’s magical realism to connect Nightbitch, and virtually all mothers, to the folk female figures who came before them. This makes Nightbitch the latest cinematic entry that provides a fascinating read of motherhood and its most horrifying aspects through a supernatural lens.
The animal-like women that Adams’ protagonist is drawn to move in packs or flocks, not dissimilarly to the coven in Elizabeth Sankey’s Witches, a compassionate, compelling documentary linking perinatal mental health to depictions of witches in pop culture.
Communion is key when exploring such hushed topics, but Nightbitch fails to uphold the more visceral part of the sisterhood contract.
This sanitisation of the original IP is blatant in the ending.
Embracing her new canine identity, Nightbitch allows her creative juices to percolate into her first exhibition in years.
Yoder’s book sees the protagonist performing for other mums as Nightbitch, encouraging a deep bond with these transfixed women. That’s until one of the guests snaps out of the trance, reintroducing societal norms into the room and causing everyone to flee.
The performance was an undress rehearsal for Nightbitch’s public debut. A hybrid of a woman and a dog, this naked Mother growls, moves around on all fours and, much to the audience’s repulsion and curiosity, kills rabbits on stage to offer to her son.
Very little of this makes it into the movie. Adams’ Mother sprays the bones of her prey a golden hue and stuffs a few animal corpses, but the exhibit’s focus is on a series of hyper-naturalistic portraits of the women in her life, depicted alongside small, dead mammals and across floral backgrounds.
A civilised Nightbitch is clad in an elegant, airy outfit and has done her makeup and hair. She doesn’t bare her teeth and dispenses glowing smiles to her mum squad, her insufferable art school pals and her adoring husband, who tells her it’s “[her] night” and yes, she should go have a drink with her gang after as if that was a rare occurrence rather than part of an equitable dynamic.
This ending is too bland to recreate the messiness hinted at in the book. In a year of cinema that gave us the last 20 minutes of The Substance, Nightbitch’s finale feels even more underwhelming.
Like Heller’s movie, Coralie Fargeat’s horror appears more interested in etching its message onto the audience’s brains and eyeballs than in contributing meaningfully to it, thought it repeats its mantras in the most radical fashion.
Nightbitch, on the other hand, opts for a domesticated finale that refuses to take a stance, an ‘all bark and no bite’ epilogue that squanders the premise and Adams’ comedic, feral turn.
In the last frames, Nightbitch departs from the novel when the lead gives birth to a daughter. This happy ending only vaguely suggests that the systemic inequality of motherhood will be passed onto the next generations of women and people with uteruses until structural change and gender-equitable policies come about. It’s wishful thinking, and the film isn’t concerned with answers or solutions to this age-old problem. Nor should it, but its docile conclusion is a missed opportunity to put on a truly daring, graphic freakshow.
Heller’s isn’t the first flick that mitigates their source material. From budgetary constraints to negotiations with studios and test screenings, some movies have watered down the disruptive quality of the novels they adapted to appeal to mainstream audiences.
Horror and thriller are usually the biggest casualties in the page-to-frame slashing.
In 1976, Brian De Palma’s Carrie immortalises Stephen King’s telekinetic prom queen as a conventionally attractive, hazy vision of terror. However, it also shrinks the magnitude of her deadly showdown from the entire town to the microcosm of her high school.
The 1974 novel collates testimonies and bulletins recording the devastating effects of Carrie’s rage on her quiet Maine community, as well as confirming the existence of other individuals with superpowers. De Palma’s version trades this disquieting knowledge for a graveyard jump-scare resolved in a nightmare.
Single-handedly building a case against English-language remakes, Let Me In erases the reflection on gender fluidity of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s 2004 vampire novel Let The Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) and its Swedish adaptation for the screen.
The book’s Eli presents as a girl, yet they insist they’re not one and are revealed to be castrated boy, Elias.
The 2008 adaption drops the ball with an unnecessary crotch shot but maintains the ambiguity and the sweet, budding love story between Eli and bullied teen Oskar. Two years later, the US remake forces the androgynous character back within the binary and rewrites Eli as tormented, decidedly femme, cis Abby.
More than two decades before the acclaimed TV show, the 1990 film version of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale doesn’t just put greater emphasis on June’s relationship with Nick but also bows out on a hopeful, romantic note. In the final scenes, Natasha Richardson’s pregnant protagonist longs for her lost lover and daughter and sits around awaiting instructions, all while being relatively safe.
Neutral towards its circumstantial romance, the novel leaves June’s fate hanging in the balance, before abruptly cutting to a meta epilogue set in 2195. In the future, a symposium of academic speakers pick apart June’s testimony and condemn Gilead’s vile practices with a dismissive, if detached, attitude.
Nightbitch is far from being 2024’s worst offender in the adaptation game. Tarot takes the top spot as the most puzzling book-to-screen treatment of the year for diverting completely from the 1992 astrology slasher novel, Horrorscope.
The film changes the age of the characters, the setting and the central plot, turning it into a forgettable party prop horror à la Talk To Me but without its emotional payoff, and winking at the Final Destination saga.
Finally, we’ve come full circle with another wild dog: Cujo from King’s 1981 homonymous novel.
The book has as bleak a finale as they get, challenging the ultimate taboo when the protagonist’s four-year-old son Tad suffers a tragic death. Following criticism, the 1983 movie adaptation prefers a reassuring family reunion, with husband Vic finding his son and wife Donna alive and kicking.
The rabid St Bernard may have left a trail of dead bodies in his wake, but it stops at her kid — because god forbid we leave the theatre with anything other than a smile and a generous dose of positive reinforcement.
These films are a few examples of screen stories that dilute the most divisive points in their source material to be more commercially viable or digestible to viewers, or both.
One could argue that different media call for different storytelling. While that’s undeniable, so is the idea that translating for the screen opens up unique possibilities to lift a novel or script’s most unsettling moments and bring them to life.
Trusting and challenging the audience is paramount, as is exploring the image’s potential without compromising on a story’s shock value.
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