Nightbitch

Nightbitch, 2024, 1 ¾ stars

Ugly mutt

Amy Adams stars in movie mongrel

Exclusive to MeierMovies, December 6, 2024

For Amy Adams’ character in writer-director Marielle Heller’s new film, life is a bitch. Misunderstood by her husband, depressed that she has no time to pursue her promising artistic career, annoyed by her fellow mothers (with whom she feels nothing in common), filled with claustrophobia at the prospect of being perpetually homebound with her toddler and grieving the loss of her younger self (who “died in childbirth”), she’s at a breaking point. Oh, and she also might be turning into a nocturnal dog.

Nightbitch, based on the well-received 2021 novel by Rachel Yoder, is a commentary on not just new motherhood but on primal womanhood, attempting to answer, in metaphorical terms, what it means to create bones, flesh, brains and a beating heart inside oneself, expel that entity violently from one’s womb and then be expected to abandon one’s previous life and raise this new creature, often with little help from anyone else. It’s no walk in the dog park.

As the unnamed “mother,” Adams embraces her inner beast, though she’s never quite scary or dirty enough for the role. She’s certainly ugly enough, though, having gained weight for the part and, for the first time, looking downright plain. New mothers will undoubtedly relate to her, and to the themes. Scoot McNairy is competent but not much more as the unnamed husband, while no other supporting performers are particularly memorable. This is Adams’ film almost entirely, though the twins playing the son are excellent and Jessica Harper (Suspiria), as an odd librarian who might (was it a dream?) have loaned “mother” a book about female magic, is intriguing. But that character, like the film’s interesting premise, never gets fully explored.

The movie wanders obligatorily into preachiness and feminism, with Adam’s somewhat maladroit voiceover growing tiresome. That narration is the enemy of mystery and robs the movie of true suspense. It feels very bookish and proves, if you didn’t know already, that the story was adapted from a novel.

Most predictable is Heller’s depiction of “husband” as incapable of understanding motherhood and inept at raising his own son. There’s the compulsory scene of him failing at bathing and feeding his child. (Think the early scenes in Kramer vs. Kramer.) But what this and most films fail to mention is that, as an on-the-road, working husband, the character is woefully untrained in these matters. You can blame him, or society, or his job, but he simply hasn’t had the requisite instruction to master those tasks. If the roles were reversed and mother was thrown into husband’s job with no teaching, she would undoubtedly fail as miserably as he does.

The truth is I don’t necessarily believe that. But it’s good, provocative food for thought. Food Hollywood rarely serves.

But Nightbitch isn’t a political film. It tries to be just about every other type of film, though: fantasy, Absurdist, body horror, drama, dark comedy, social commentary and even Lifetime. However, it’s too grounded for fantasy, too safe for Absurdism, too palatable for body horror, too silly for drama, too unfunny for dark comedy, too heavy-handed for social commentary and too adult for Lifetime. Ultimately, it’s a mongrel: a film only a mother could love.

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For more information about this movie, visit IMDB and Wikipedia. It is currently playing in theaters.