Nightbitch: Movie Review

Cast: Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Jessica Harper, Zoe Chao, Mary Holland
Director: Mariella Hellar

A satirical take on motherhood that has occasional flashes of deadpan brilliance amid frustrations over where the story could potentially have gone, Amy Adams gives a mightily impressive performance as a woman foist into motherhood and feeling trapped by having done so.

Having given up a career as an artist for the new role, Adams' character begins to resent the monotony of her routine and the ignorance of her partner (McNairy) who just appears when not working but is mostly absent during the parenting part.

One day when her son tells her she's getting fuzzy, she notices new hairs. Dismissing them as life pre-menopause, it becomes clearer that she's getting more feral and before long, the mother is out at nights as a dog...

What could have been a bizarre body horror drama feels more sanitised than perhaps its source material might suggest, but that doesn't mean Hellar's film is as neutered as that may appear.

Adams gives a stellar performance to the growing, bubbling inner rage of the mother - buoyed by a script that mines the dark humour in sardonic places and the wry observations over the archaic expectations of motherhood, her imagined monologues give way to both some of the film's harshest truths but also its saddest realities.

There are elements which pertain to the loss of identity and the more frustrated she becomes, the more feral she reveals herself to be. And it's here that Nightbitch feels like it's been watered down for the big screen as elements which could have had real bite, feel more muzzled for wider audiences.

In among all this though, make no mistake - Adams soars in the role, making the most of the absurd premise and giving humanity to the hardest truths that are born from the tragedy and bittersweet joy of parenting.