Nightbitch (2024) Review!!

Synopsis – A woman pauses her career to be a stay-at-home mom, but soon her domesticity takes a surreal turn.

My Take – Having a child is indeed a blessing. The love and pain you feel for an individual, other than yourself, is surely indescribable. But behind the curtains, at least for first time parents, no one talks about the tough times, especially those sleepless nights, those half-eaten meals, those disturbed events and those prioritizing of little things to work into the irregular schedule of the baby. And of course, the isolation that housewives usually feel when their better half jets off to their jobs.

But while we have seen various tragic (mostly horror) films on motherhood, this latest from director Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) adopts probably the most outlandish portrayal to ever appear on celluloid.

Based on the 2021 novel by Rachel Yoder, the film is structured as a psychoanalysis of motherhood in the form of a goofy, lightly gory film with one of the silliest, most attention-securing premises of the traditionally self-serious Oscar season. And while the resulting film is entertaining enough and quite bold in its exploration, but having identified its allegory for contemporary motherhood, in the sense the lead character finds herself turning into a dog, the script doesn’t know what to do with it.

Leaving us confused about the message the film wanted to provide, something which made it harder for some of the more dramatic scenes, especially the ending to hit home. All we get is smug pointing and nodding here and there instead of anything smart or savage.

Just a surface-level commentary that motherhood is hellish, husbands are thoughtless, and the wider society is basically misogynistic. No doubt, the film would have worked better if it had been pushed further in either direction, as an intimate interrogation, or as a full-bore bestial freak-out. Unfortunately, this uneasy middle ground leaves it feeling like a confused missed opportunity.

The story follows an exhausted stay-at-home mom (Amy Adams), a one-time artist who stepped back to take care of her toddler son (played by twins Arleigh Patrick and Emmett James Snowden), moving from city to suburbs and swapping exhibiting to frying frozen hash browns for breakfast.

Though she loves her son deeply, she also resents the role she’s now playing, struggling with a loss of identity and agency and sense of self, and failing to bond with the other mothers around her. She’s also finding herself increasingly at the mercy of her anger, something that she had carefully learned to manage and subdue like many women – but with every thoughtless comment from her husband (Scoot McNairy), who is a good guy, but travels a lot for work and doesn’t help around the house nearly as much as he could, and every thankless task she’s lumped with, something starts to shift. Soon, she starts finding weird hair on her.

A few too many chin whiskers, a patch on her lower back that’s a little more aggressive than usual. Even her sense of smell seems enhanced even more acutely than when she was pregnant. Then she starts feeling connected to dogs in the park, eventually beginning to believe she is too is turning into one.

At this point the film can’t quite decide if it wants to be a socially-provocative drama or a domestic comedy with touches of magic realism. It can’t quite achieve the former because its cultural commentary is compromised by the rather bland, upscale suburban setting.

Mainly as director Heller spends more time jumping between magical realism and superficial social commentary, forcing the narrative to fall into a pattern of repetition: Mother is exhausted after looking after her baby, she monologues about feeling like an animal, she transforms into that animal, and so the cycle continues. Mother’s relationships get lost in this repetition, making her ultimately come across as a stale and rather limited character.

The film is constantly hinting toward something deeper, something weirder, but it never quite gets there. Even her transformation from mother to dog does not go as deep into the gnarly body horror as one would expect, and it’s a neutering that the film struggles with a gonzo concept that’s left a little tame in execution.

The metaphor of the animal transformation lends itself to discussions about postpartum psychosis or declining mental health, and one can’t help but wonder what the film could have been if director Heller had dug deeper into these themes.

Yes, the bond between mother and son is tender and sweet, yet this is hardly revelatory stuff. Rather than developing its world and letting the engaging visual style lead the way, the narrative opts for a happier ending than a complicated one. Certain parties see the error of their ways, and everybody gets what they want. But we all know motherhood/parenthood doesn’t fit so neatly inside a box.

But despite everything, the film manages to be perfectly watchable mainly because it has Amy Adams, who is probably the best she has been in nearly a decade in a performance that feels pretty fearless and a character I was on the side of from the very first scene in large part because of her work. She sure does a terrific job of vacillating between sadness and pure contempt.

It also helps that opposite her, Scoot McNairy successfully channels the cluelessness of an everyman. In supporting roles, Zoë Chao, Mary Holland, Archana Rajan and Jessica Harper are likable enough. On the whole, ‘Nightbitch’ is an uneven comedy horror that frustratingly doesn’t bite deep enough.