Nightbitch (2024): Amy Adams Struggles To Hold It Together

Since her break-out supporting role as Ashley in 2005’s Junebug and her leading role in 2007’s Disney hit Enchanted, Amy Adams has been an actress worth watching.  From Sunshine Cleaning and Doubt in 2008 through The Fighter (2010), Her and American Hustle in 2013, Arrival (2016) and even Vice (2018) and Hillbilly Elegy (2020) she enlivens every character she takes on, whether it’s a leading role or a supporting one. She’s the lead in the new picture, Nightbitch, and the best thing about it. 

An adaptation of the 2021 novel by Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch is written and directed by Marielle Heller,  Heller has previously directed three excellent feature films: The Diary of A Teenage Girl (2015), which she co-wrote; Can You Ever Forgive Me (2018); and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019). She also filmed the live Broadway production of Heidi Shreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me for Amazon Prime Video (where it’s still available).

Nightbitch concerns an artist [Adams] who has suspended her career to devote herself to motherhood.  This is not exactly working out for her.  While there is some sweetness to her relationship with her toddler son, the job is tedious and often deadly boring, messy, frustrating, isolating, and never-ending, plus (for the most part) thankless. Emphasizing the dehumanizing effect of her new role, the character is nameless – listed in the credits simply as “Mother”. Her little boy is referred to as “Son’. Her husband [“Husband”], played by Scoot McNairy, is of no help at all - well-meaning but self-absorbed and largely unaware of all the above adjectives describing Mother’s stay-at home life.  In stereotypical fashion, Husband assumes all is just fine at home and sees his contribution to the family’s happiness entirely in his role as the breadwinner.

If you’ve heard anything about Nightbitch, it’s surely that Adam’s character – unable to express her primal needs during the long imprisonment in dull motherhood - turns into a dog at night, running around the neighborhood with canine abandonment.  The film does provide us ample visual evidence of this, but is this body-horror truly happening? Many reviewers report her transformation as real, but I very much doubt that it’s intended to be taken literally. It’s not realism, but Mother’s magical thinking, a visualization of her desperation – and a sign of how Mother’s situation may be threatening her sanity. These scenes are analogous to several other moments in the film  where someone – Husband in one example, a lady at the supermarket in another - makes an inane comment, and Mother brazenly, angrily reacts as she’d really like to, before the movie abruptly flashes back to the polite socially acceptable  response she actually gives.  If you have seen the movie, or plan to, you can judge for yourself.

From the double entendre title to the scenes of Mother’s seeming transformations, there is a certain weirdness to Nightbitch, to be sure. But it’s done with panache and humor.  More than anything, it is designed as comedic – and it is often very funny.   Adams carries the film on her shoulders and she’s excellent. But without a lot of support from the screenplay, it’s a heavy lift. 

Generally, the production takes itself too seriously, harping on a message that is worthwhile to remember,  but hardly new or surprising.  The intended point of the picture’s dramatically negative, if often amusing, depictions of the everyday difficulties faced by stay-at home moms like Mother, is to prompt more discussion about the burdens and sacrifices involved. This theme – and the promotion of the film as an “important” provocative touchstone – reminds me of the 2018 film Tully, with Charlize Theron as a mom at her wits end with a new baby and two other young children, who hires a mysterious night nanny to help her cope. [Read our review of Tully.]  The problem with both of these pictures is that their concentration on the import of their stories takes precedence over the rendering of their stories.  This is a departure from Heller's more successful approach in her earlier features.

One important example of this in Nightbitch is the absence of real characters. Aside from the bona fide hardships and frustrations she experiences as the mother of a toddler, Mother herself is largely unknown to us. She seems to have no actual friends. The other toddler moms she occasionally meets, her former art gallery colleagues, and even Husband – all are hollow stereotypes. Her connection with Husband – whether pre-natal or post-natal - is not fleshed out at all; so even that relationship has no depth. Literally all we know about them is what I’ve already described. He doesn’t seem to take much notice of her angst or increasingly odd behavior, being too wrapped up in whatever he does in his work life. And she says nothing to him about the weirdness she’s going through (or anything else, really) - which only serves to provide some defense to the charge that he is clueless. 

With a little more attention to the basics, Nightbitch could have been a much stronger movie. Still, as I’ve said, Amy Adams is always worth watching – and it’s interesting to see her in a very different manifestation than we are used to. Despite my complaints, the movie IS, as noted, entertaining and often quite amusing. 

1 hour 39 minutes Rated R

Grade: B

In wide theatrical release. Streaming date currently unknown.