Thoughts on Nightbitch

    On Hulu, I watched the 2024 black comedy written and directed by Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl; Can You Ever Forgive Me?; A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), based on the 2021 novel by Rachel Yoder. The film stars Amy Adams as a former artist and current stay-at-home mother simply known as "Mother," who is struggling with feeling stifled at home taking care of her toddler son while her husband is busy at work, essentially making her feel like a single parent. 

    She keeps a polite smile when talking to others, while having fantasies about wanting to vent about her frustrations at putting her career on hold for motherhood and feeling like she is losing her sense of self. She goes to a library event for mothers and toddlers, for the kids to listen to a children's music performer play, and is initially resistant when the other moms are trying to bond with her, wanting to have normal conversations with other adults outside of being stay-at-home moms.

    Her husband (Scoot McNairy), just known as Husband (the child is known as Son or Baby) is glaringly oblivious to her struggles, thinking she's having fun being at home and playing with the baby all day, not realizing the toll it's taking on her to be alone with their child all day, with his dependence on her. The child refuses to sleep by himself, and will keep her up when she is trying to read him to bed, and she blames herself for not following a sleep cycle idea for him when he was a baby, thinking she screwed him up.

    The story takes a magical realism turn where Mother finds strange new developments on her body, like a patch of white fur on her back, pulling out a tail through a pustule boil on her lower back, and growing two rows of eight nipples on her torso. And that local dogs are attracted to her, coming up to her in the park and at her front door. She realizes that she is turning into a dog, and at night, she transforms into a dog, racing around her neighborhood, and feeling more free as a dog. As a person, she has heightened senses, bonds with her son more by pretending he is her puppy, and feeling a renewed sense of life with her dog spirit. 

    She learns more by going to the library and checking out books recommended by the librarian (Jessica Harper of Suspiria and Shock Treatment fame), researching cultural myths and of animal spirits and transformations in women to understand the change in her. Harper as the librarian has this mystery to her that makes her feel more understanding of Mother's position in life, and she brings this quiet and eccentric grace to her role.

    The film is interesting when tackling how a woman could feel isolated and lonely as a stay-at-home mom, especially with husbands who only want the fun parts of parenting and don't know the day-to-day routines of childcare. And it has a lot of great needle drops that is influenced by Heller being a Gen-X director, like Weird Al's "Dare to be Stupid," songs by the Cocteau Twins and Joanna Newsom. 

    I wasn't as interested when the film would try to make it more about female empowerment in a way that felt cliched, or how her resolution with her marital issues felt too pat and like her husband still wasn't going to be emotionally there for her. I liked it more leaning into the dark satire and weirdness, not trying to have a wrapped-up happy ending that felt too "nice" for me. And as this film's plot reminded me a lot of Marianna Palka's 2017 film Bitch, where a similarly-frustrated SAHM starts acting like a dog as a nervous breakdown reaction, I felt Rachel Yoder may have taken some inspiration from that and made the protagonist turn into a literal dog. 

    It's a decent movie at just over 90 minutes, that likely could have gone weirder and darker (though I was annoyed at a scene of implied animal abuse, though nothing was shown graphically), but it's always great to see Amy Adams onscreen, and I liked that Heller took on this film as a comment about motherhood and artistic expression and feminism.