Amy Adams is slowly but surely turning into a dog in Marielle Heller’s new movie. Here’s our Nightbitch review.
Some of 2024’s best horror films have focused on the horrendous assault on the female body that pregnancy can be. Both Immaculate and The First Omen deal with women’s bodily autonomy and show the sheer pain of childbirth while The Substance finds Demi Moore excruciatingly giving birth to a “better” version of herself from her actual backbone.
Nightbitch, Marielle Heller’s A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood follow-up, takes things a little further. If you thought childbirth was hard, try being a full-time mother. The film, adapted from Rachel Yoder’s 2021 novel, suggests that being a mother essentially means giving up your entire identity in order to devote your whole life to the little critters that you push out of yourself, rather painfully.
Here, Mother (Amy Adams) starts noticing some bizarre changes in herself, including a lot of unusual hair growth, as she struggles with the constraints of being a parent. Nightbitch doesn’t exactly say anything new about motherhood that The Babadook or Tully didn’t already say in truth, but there’s a feral rage to Mother that feels somewhat untapped and refreshing.
The situation isn’t helped by the fact that Mother, a former artist with exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, is essentially alone in caring for her son while the Husband (Scoot McNairy) often travels for work. “How many women have delayed their greatness while the men around them didn’t know what to do with theirs?” she ponders as we watch her cook the same frozen hashbrowns every morning and dodge the pretentious other mothers.
As Mother begins to transform into an actual dog at night, in order to escape her suburban nightmare, expectations soar for the rest of the film. Oscar-nominee Amy Adams as an actual dog, running wild and free in the night? Surely we’re in for something truly deranged?
Except we’re not. The actual nightbitch in the film might have some bite to her, but the film around it doesn’t. Nightbitch tends to say out loud what many women already think and there’s certainly some fun and exhilaration to this, but ultimately, the film struggles to make its own deductions about being a mother and what it does to your identity.
Granted, I laughed several times during the film and left with a deep sensation of satisfaction. I was entertained and found myself agreeing with the film’s portrayal of motherhood – or at least materializing my worst fears about it on a really big screen.
As for Adams, this is her best role since her superb turn in Sharp Objects. The role of Mother allows her to let loose in a way that Adams hasn’t been able to do in a good while. Nightbitch wouldn’t work nearly as well without her, her sincerity and rage elevating Heller’s film.
She’s supported nicely by McNairy, but the thing about movies like Nightbitch is that everyone else tends to fade to the background while one actor shines above the rest. It’s good for Adams, who will most likely be pushed for several Best Actress nominations, but distracting for the us. It’s not that anyone else is bad, and McNairy certainly brings a lot of the same energy that made his character in Speak No Evil so relatable, but Adams’ character is allowed so much more detail and development that it starts working against the film as a whole.
There’s a lot to enjoy in Nightbitch. Many women will find empowerment in its honest exploration of the uglier parts of motherhood and how women often have to sacrifice their sense of self in order to mold a small child into a decent human being. Heller doesn’t quite commit to pushing her film further into a weirder territory that the premise teases though, yet Adams has rarely been better.
Nightbitch is in UK cinemas 6th December.
