'Nightbitch' review: Amy Adams goes hard, but Marielle Heller holds back

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One of our most anticipated movies out of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival was Nightbitch. The reasons were many. For one, it's the latest from Marielle Heller, the helmer of such critically heralded adaptations as the coming-of-age dramedy The Diary of a Teenage Girl, the moving Mr. Rogers biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, and the Academy Award–nominated and absolutely hilarious biographical comedy Can You Ever Forgive Me? Two, Nightbitch is led by Amy Adams, the six-time Oscar–nominated star of dramas like The Master and Doubt, as well as comedies like American Hustle and Vice. Three, based on the Rachel Yoder novel, this project promised to give Adams a role she could really sink her teeth into.

As hinted by the title and the film's first trailer, Nightbitch is about a middle-aged woman who feels stifled by her identity as stay-at-home mom. The ruthless routine of caring for her young son and playing supporting partner to her bacon-bringing husband has her on the brink of breakdown. But then, she sniffs out a newfound freedom as she begins to transform into a dog once the baby's put to bed. There are shades of Jennifer Kent's The Babadook in the premise, so the potential of this maternal dramedy seemed extraordinary.

Heller's established blend of sharp humor and deep empathy combined with Adams' ability to play everything from heart-wrenching drama to gut-busting broad comedy seems a perfect pairing to this material. But unfortunately, the most shocking thing in Nightbitch is how unshocking it ultimately is.

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Nightbitch howls for the frustrated mothers.

Heller's adapted screenplay gets off to a solid start with a grocery trip that introduces both the mundane and thankless duties of this unnamed mother (Adams, who is referred to as Mother in the credits) and the undercurrent of intellectual frustration boiling beneath her pleasant smile. When a former colleague in chic business attire asks how she likes "getting to be at home" with the baby all day, this pale and frazzled mother launches into a rant of her unrealized ambitions, her fear that mommy brain is killing her creativity as an artist, and her concern that there's no going back. But then the film leaps back a few moments, effectively creating a temporal record scratch that takes us back to the end of the question. This time, Mother answers with what she's supposed to say: "Yeah. I love it."

That she loves her son (also unnamed, and played by twins Arleigh and Emmett Snowden) is a given. He's adorable, yes, even when he's drinking out of the toilet or throwing paint all over her kitchen walls. What plagues her is the endless cycle of breakfast, diapers, bedtime, and mommy-and-me storytime at the library. There, she might find community among the other mothers, but she resists the warm invitations from these cheerful moms (The Afterparty's Zo? Chao, Happiest Season's Mary Holland, and Archana Rajan). Perhaps because to accept their friendship would be to surrender to this confining mom space?

Her resentment builds against her husband (Speak No Evil's Scoot McNairy), who is the embodiment of weaponized incompetence and emotional idiocy. Then she begins to grow fur. Heller expertly weaves in elements of body horror grotesquely mimicking to comedic effect the physical transformation of a body throughout early motherhood. A particularly impactful scene involves Mother probing at a lump on her tailbone, which oozes a thick, milky pus, then long hair, and finally, an undeniable tail. The audience at the TIFF world premiere audibly gagged and groaned as Adams pulled fur and pus from her lower back! Both here and later — when Mother discovers she's grown four new nipples down her torso — Heller's heroine is not repulsed but empowered by her ability to transform. It's a thrilling beginning to a tale of finding your inner animal. But frustrating, Nighbitch fails to go fully feral.

Nightbitch lacks bite.

Mother finds fresh empowerment in her unusual behavior, like nighttime runs with runaway dogs, a carnal hunger for meat, outbursts at her stereotypically smug child-free friends, and an urge to strike back violently at her awful husband, who dares to chirp the deeply unhelpful advice, "Happiness is a choice!" There's an engaging build-up as she begins to move away from fantasizing about emotional outbursts and begins to act them out. But despite a bit of bloodlust in the form of small animal kills, there's no real sense of threat to the film.

This brings me back to Jennifer Kent's brilliant maternal horror movie The Babadook, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. While the films are tonally different, they have a lot in common. Both follow a woman trying desperately to play by the rules of being a "good mother," but finding the sacrifice of self demanded for this role absolutely suffocating.

Both have young sons, who they love but also resent. Both have murderous eyes toward the family pet, and both fear they are being taken over by some mysterious primal force. But Nightbitch won't embrace the darkness like The Babadook dared to. Heller's Mother might be bitchy, but she'll never go so far that she'll scare the audience. Admittedly, The Babadook is a nightmare of motherhood, where Nightbitch is meant to be a fantasy of liberation. So, there's understandable cause for Heller not to go as hard as Kent did. Still, without probing deeply to a point of true peril, which would require Mother destroying the things she loves, the low point in Nightbitch just doesn't hit as hard as it could. As the film turns to climb back to a happy ending, the change feels frustratingly mild instead of transgressive or revolutionary.

There are moments where Nightbitch seems on the verge of tearing down the ideals of "good motherhood" from its damning pedestal and ripping the concept to pieces, freeing Adams' Mother for good. Most of these come through the narration, presumably much of it pulled directly from Yoder's prose. The story illustrates the constraints of the role of mother, where sacrifice is taken so much for granted that moms don't even have a socially sanctioned space to complain about the hardships they endure. While Adams' harried (and hairy) heroine begins to discover some of these constraints are self-imposed, the film refuses to explore what it would mean to dismantle the expectations of others. Without what that could look like, the critique feels incomplete, suggesting some solid me-time is all that's needed to achieve a balance, ignoring the greater societal pressures put upon mothers specifically.

To Adams' credit, she's committed to playing Mother with an intense authenticity. Throughout the film, her character's hair is dull, her face unpolished by standard movie make-up, her body bigger than model-sizing would allow. She looks a lot like the mothers you might see any given day at the playground. And that makes her delight in her secret hidden tail and bonus nipples uniquely thrilling, punctuated by Adams' beguiling glee at these discoveries. There is much more to her than meets the eye.

Yet Adams balances this absurdity with earnest monologues about the incredible power of a body that can create life. And at times, this is electrifying. But all of this peculiarity and growing power sets up a promise of something extraordinary that is not delivered on. This mother never gets truly angry, so despite her canine quirks, she feels contained to a chipper maternal narrative. In the end, Nightbitch feels unfinished.

Nightbitch was reviewed out its World Premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Nightbitch opens in theaters Dec. 6.

UPDATE: Dec. 5, 2024, 4:56 p.m. EST This review was originally published on Sept. 21, 2024. It has been updated for its theatrical release.