NIGHTBITCH: 3 STARS. “Amy Adams in a fearless and ferocious performance.”
SYNOPSIS: In “Nightbitch,” a new darkly funny horror film now playing in theatres, Amy Adams plays an artist-turned-stay-at-home-mom who struggles with domesticity. Her life takes a surreal turn when her maternal instincts manifest in canine form, including an affinity for howling and hunting small animals. “I am a woman,” she says. “I am an animal. I am Nightbitch.”
CAST: Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Arleigh Snowden, Emmett Snowden, Zoë Chao, Mary Holland, Ella Thomas, Archana Rajan, and Jessica Harper. Written and directed by Marielle Heller, based on the 2021 novel by Rachel Yoder.
REVIEW: “Motherhood, changes you,” says librarian Norma (Jessica Harper). “It connects you with some primal urges.”
“Nightbitch” may struggle to balance mythology, metaphor and the messiness of parenting, but Amy Adams’s fearless and ferocious performance ties it all together. “I was once a girl,” she says. “Then a woman. A bride. A mother and now I will be this.”
A blend of rebellion, confusion, horror and razor-sharp comic timing, it is an oddball examination of motherhood and the changes, physical and mental, that come along with it. “No one talks about the cellular change that happens when you become a mother,” she says.
“Nightbitch” is a combination of many elements, relies too heavily on voice over, and could have used a little harder shove toward the outer edges of good taste, but writer/director Marielle Heller finds compassion amid the chaos.
It’s a strange, sometime gross ride, driven by female rage and loneliness, but within its metaphorical approach are empowering, empathetic messages about the real-life job of parenting.
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