Despite being a six-time Oscar nominee, Amy Adams’ career in the last decade or so resembles that of someone who has lost the ability to say no. Her latest film is Nightbitch, a dark comedy about the horrors of motherhood, in which she plays a nameless woman who finds herself transforming into a dog. Literally. The movie is directed by Marielle Heller, whose last feature was A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood. Nightbitch is, in many ways, the cynical sister to that stubbornly saccharine film. It’s also a fantastical reality check for anybody contemplating parenthood. In addition to repelling audiences with its weirdness, however, Nightbitch could possibly cause Suniel Shetty to reconsider his views on gender roles.
In an interview, the veteran actor said that the fairer sex should understand that it is their job to rear children at home while the men go out and make money. In Nightbitch, the protagonist is made to single-parent her two-year-old son all by herself, because her husband can’t stop travelling for work. In fact, until he shows up 30 minutes into the film, you assume that she doesn’t have a husband at all. Adams’ character is aghast at the turn her life has taken; you could almost imagine her launching into the speech from Gone Girl, where Rosamund Pike kicks herself for having been played by society. Adams’ character had to push her promising career as an artist to the backburner, while her husband continued going to his pointless conferences. She could’ve done something with her life; the world was her oyster. But she chose to have a child.
Amy Adams in a still from Nightbitch.
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She follows the same routine everyday; she begins by cooking her baby some breakfast, takes him for a walk in the park, and begrudgingly participates in activities like sing-alongs and book readings. There, she judges other moms for being so ‘perfect’ while she becomes consumed by bitter regret. The movie doesn’t sugarcoat the protagonists’ distaste for raising a child, although it doesn’t quite explain why she decided to have one in the first place. A wry voiceover opens a window into her mind, but all we can gather from her ramblings is that she’s an unhappy person who feels stuck in her boring existence. It’s not like she has any help from her husband.
She’s like the mom from We Need to Talk About Kevin, who discovers that she has no affection for her son, which, consequently, turns him into a high school shooter. However, Adams’ character in Nightbitch isn’t mean to her child. The repercussions of her regret are felt mostly by her. The complicated emotions that she’s going through (wo) manifest when she turns into an actual dog, and discovers that this is the only way she can be her messy self. She’s certainly going through a lot; Adams’ character slaps her husband across the face (in the film’s best bit of physical comedy) when he tries to assure her that ‘happiness is a choice’. Played by Scoot McNairy, the husband returns from one of his never-ending work trips after we’ve already become familiar with his wife’s state of mind. It’s not a pleasant place to hang out.
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Amy Adams in a still from Nightbitch.
This eventually becomes one of the film’s many stumbling blocks. Because the writing does her no favours, Adams is cornered into giving a rather one-note performance. It’s unusual to see an actor of her calibre struggle like this, although she tries her best to swing between vitriol and vengeance as things become more heightened in the narrative. If the underseen Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried film Jennifer’s Body was about burgeoning teen sexuality, Nightbitch is about pre-menopause. Both movies, along with Anne Hathaway’s alcoholism allegory Colossal — this is the movie in which the main character gets drunk and turns into a Japanese monster — are an existential examination of womanhood.
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Nightbitch is the weakest of them all, primarily because it doesn’t lean into genre as hard as it should. For the most part, the movie plays like a dramatic character study about the slow unraveling of an older millennial. There is, however, a far more exciting body horror movie in there. It reeks of a mismatch between the subject matter and the filmmaker. Heller has made movies about the female experience before — Can You Ever Forgive Me? was spectacular — but Nightbitch lacks the bite.
Nightbitch
Director – Marielle Heller
Cast – Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy
Rating – 2/5
