After being intrigued by whatever Nightbitch might be when I first heard about it (and I really didn't know exactly what it was, other than Amy Adams being a mother who seems to take a turn for the feral), I was dissuaded from making it a priority by the middling-to-poor reviews it got from many people I often feel in sync with. So it was a pleasant surprise to find out that it was actually really good.
Amy Adams plays a mother who starts to get a bit fed up of being in the box simply labelled "mother". This puts her at odds with her husband (Scoot McNairy), and it also causes some raised eyebrows from other mothers. But it also causes some envy, because a lot of women want the chance to remind themselves of who they once were, to celebrate themselves completely, and to admit the oft-unspoken truth that, as much as a mother loves her child, motherhood can also often suck.
Adapting the novel by Rachel Yoder, what you get here is a sharp and smart film from writer-director Marielle Heller that, much like the character at the heart of it, fights against being pigeonholed, and it feels as if that is part of the problem for many who watched it. The easiest way to describe it is as a comedy, but it's a very dark and wonderfully strange comedy. It's also a comedy that many will refuse to even smile at, considering what it says about the messy nature of parenting life and the many small (and large) ways in which women lose their own identity as they take on the roles of wife, mother, and basically whatever else fits around men who don't suffer from that same loss of identity.
Adams is fantastic in the lead role, really sinking her teeth (pun intended) into something that is far removed from the kind of thing shown onscreen in mainstream fare. Credited simply as "Mother", she's happy to show herself hitting a real low point before digging deep within herself to find a way back to the surface. She's generally always great, but this feels like something very different from any other performance she has given in the last couple of decades. McNairy also does a great job as the husband (credited as "Husband"), handling himself with good grace in the role that could have easily been performed as the main villain of the piece. Jessica Harper has a small, but important, role, and Zoë Chao, Mary Holland, Archana Rajan, and one or two others help to move along the conversation about the toll of motherhood and the ways in which society enables the constant erosion of women in service of the care of loved ones.
Don't take note of the people who are disappointed by this not being something that it never intended to be. It has also been marketed as a bit of a horror movie (something I would argue against, although there's an element of body horror running throughout it, which is in line with the equation of motherhood/marriage putting someone in a relationship with a parasitic entity they also end up in love with). Enjoy it for what it is, which is something quite unique and brilliantly scathing, and don't worry about what it isn't. I suspect that too many people have already done the latter.
Oh, and bonus points for use of "Dare To Be Stupid" on the soundtrack.
8/10
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