Writer/Director Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood) refuses to color within the genre lines in her feature adaptation of Rachel Yoder‘s novel, Nightbitch. Heller employs everything from poignant family drama to pitch black comedy to horror fairy tale to highlight the complexities of motherhood and identity. It’s so defiant of easy categorization and tone that marketing has their work cut out for them, which is to say that Nightbitch isn’t quite what the trailer suggests. It is indeed messy, but the earnest cultural conversations on maternity and a capable lead performance transcend Nightbitch‘s wackier impulses.
Nightbitch introduces Amy Adams, credited solely as Mother, well into her role as an exhausted stay-at-home mom. Mother daydreams about acerbically expelling her darkest inner thoughts to a former coworker she bumps into at the grocery store, a familiar scene capturing the exhausting nature of parenthood. Not helping matters is that her toddler Son, played by twins Arleigh Patrick and Emmett James Snowden, has boundless energy that makes his terrible twos all the more daunting to deal with day and night.
Mother is practically a single parent, with her Husband (Scoot McNairy) traveling for work so often that he’s hardly a presence, and it’s no wonder that her simmering resentment is reaching a roaring boil and pushing her to the brink. But her dwindling wits and sanity seem to manifest bizarre symptoms, from an increase in body hair to the nightly impulse to howl at the moon.
While Heller dabbles in all genres and tones, the first half of Nightbitch leans into the darkness of Mother’s internal plight. The plunge into Mother’s deteriorating psychological state induces no shortage of darkly comedic situations and gags, treating motherhood like a metaphoric noose around the neck of a once successful career woman. Amy Adams is more than game as the awkward mom trying to navigate social situations while masking her distaste for all the stay-at-home mom expectations, like the Baby Book Time hour at the library. The build-up of her pent-up frustrations gives way to body horror moments, including a gross-out pus-filled cyst of canine hair and a penchant for canine proclivities that firmly shift the oppressive confines of raising a child solo into the realm of the supernatural.
The more Mother finds liberation in giving into her primal instincts, though, the more Heller leaves the genre elements behind to focus on Mother’s journey toward regaining her sense of self and self-worth. It’s jarring how abruptly the body horror gets forgotten, or the transformation into canine at all, seemingly culminating in the swept-aside death of a pet. Heller bypasses the raw meat cravings in Yoder’s novel, instead offering a cringe sequence that sees Mother choking down kale while uttering a baffling line about the power of her vagina before running into the night. It’s one sign of many that signal the struggle to incorporate magical realism and the supernatural into the earnest conversations about how our society views and treats moms. Heller attempts to maintain magical realism by introducing flashbacks of Mother’s mother, a woman also bogged down by expectations. But, like Jessica Harper‘s (Suspiria) oddly truncated role as Mother’s mysterious magical guide, this aspect is largely swept aside in a confusing and forgotten fashion. Both of these story threads feel incomplete to a confusing and unsatisfying degree.
Nightbitch is a supernatural dramedy that’s too skittish by its genre elements, rendering the genre-bender a bit disparate in tone, swinging far too widely between cringe humor and poignant conversation starter. Its strength lies ultimately with its capable lead; Adams plays the only fully three-dimensional character and effortlessly carries the film with raw nerve and endearing authenticity. Refreshingly, Mother is a woman angry at everything but being a mom. She loves her son with profound ferocity; it’s her Husband’s oafish obtuseness and society’s lack of support that vexes her. It builds to the appropriate good-for-her type conclusion you’d expect, made effective by the goodwill Adams’ portrayal earns and the inherent charm of the cast.
Heller gets so caught up in the central messaging and Mother’s emotional journey that the rest falls apart. It’s a dark fairy tale about motherhood, but one that almost seems to treat its genre elements like an allergy. Adams creates a grounding emotional throughline to tie it together just enough for its messaging to succeed, eliciting some genuine laughs along the way, but Nightbitch seems too scared of its own feral setup and defangs its righteous wrath too early.
Nightbitch made its premiere at TIFF and releases in theaters on December 6, 2024.
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