Audrey Fox
With a name like Nightbitch, the intentions are clear – this film is meant to be edgy, transgressive even. So it’s disappointing how dated the material frequently feels. As a stay-at-home mother who finds herself turning into a dog at night, Amy Adams throws herself into the more bizarre elements of the role, eating raw meat and howling at the moon. Look at her, it says, she’s really willing to go there. But while Nightbitch wants to be a middle finger to the patriarchy, it ends up being little more than the cinematic equivalent of a Facebook meme from 2010 about how being a mom is hard.
Mother (Amy Adams) is in something of a rut. Formerly an ambitious, creative artist, she’s taking time off from her career to stay at home with her young son, a prospect she finds more daunting and soul-crushing each passing day. Her husband (Scoot McNairy) is of absolutely no help, since he travels for work and is apparently oblivious that the challenges she experiences as the primary parent, and even the activities in her community designed to help her connect with other mothers leave her irritated and feeling more lonely than ever. Her only release, it would seem, is the nighttime, when she inexplicably transforms into a dog and roams the neighborhood. Only here is she allowed to unleash her primal rage and grapple with the fact that as a mother, she has not only lost her identity – she’s been effectively dehumanized. The only opportunity she has to be let off the leash, as it were, is under the cover of darkness, after her family has gone to bed and they have no more demands on her time.
The fears that Mother experiences in Nightbitch are entirely valid: that no matter what she does, she’s not enough; that she’s being forced to sacrifice essential parts of her sense of sense at the altar of motherhood, while her husband gets to carry on his regular adult life with seemingly little interruption; that she’s being stretched so thin that the day might come when she disappears altogether; that when her son grows older and she’s allowed time to return to her own interests, there might not be anything left of her to go back to. But while they’re certainly reasonable and relatable feelings as a mother, they’re expressed with all the subtlety of blunt force trauma.
And what’s more, there’s a self-congratulatory tone to Nightbitch that makes it seem as though it truly believes it’s the first film to ever present the idea that motherhood isn’t all roses and sunshine. When Amy Adams finally explodes, delivering a monologue designed to give voice to all the down-trodden mothers of the world, it’s not so much thought-provoking as preaching to the choir. It’s a yas queen moment transmitted to us live from 20 years ago. As we watch her struggle to articulate the injustices she faces that go unnoticed by the rest of the world, it’s difficult not to wonder who exactly this message is for.
In the year of our lord 2024, who really needs to be told that being a mom is hard? Are young women across America not delaying or forgoing parenthood entirely in mass numbers, in part in recognition of the fact that it’s a difficult, largely thankless job that becomes increasingly untenable as villages shrink and societal support is withdrawn? Perhaps the most damning aspect of Nightbitch is how confident it is, in both its script and its directorial style, that it’s the only one courageous enough to tell it like it is about motherhood, to give credit to mothers and highlight the impossible position they’ve been put in for so long. It thinks it’s groundbreaking, but these are not unspoken truths – they’re nigh on universally acknowledged. When Amy Adams rages on screen, she’s not so much championing the downtrodden by saying what no one has dared to say before now as she is echoing what mothers have been posting online since Facebook first opened up to users without a college email address. (And this is to say nothing of the preponderance of films that have already tackled this very subject, but with more nuance – Tully with Charlize Theron immediately comes to mind.)
When it comes down to substance, there’s nothing much wrong with what Nightbitch is saying. Even with the most loving and supportive spouses, mothers often end up with a disproportionate share of the child-rearing responsibilities, and just because it’s been discussed before doesn’t mean people should stop talking about it. But there’s something about the way Nightbitch frames itself as offering an edgy commentary on motherhood that undercuts its effectiveness. If Amazon is selling t-shirts for doom-scrolling wine moms that make the same argument as your movie, it’s hard to present it as provocative or transgressive—a space Nightbitch desperately wants to occupy, but falls short of at every turn.
“Nightbitch” is in theaters this weekend.
