Directed by Marielle Heller
Language: English
Year: 2024
Shaun’s Rating: 3.5/5 ★
Before Watching:
Whatever happened to “good evening, ma’am”? Film Twitter has been anxiously awaiting the initial reactions to Amy Adams’s latest film like J.D. Vance awaiting a restock of Sephora eyeliner. To be fair, the trailer did market the film as if it were Kafka’s The Metamorphosis adapted for the screen by Judd Apatow, which did it no favors. It’s the worst canine press since Trump’s “they’re eating the dogs” rant (as I call it, Scooby Coup).
Adams stars as a (nameless) new mother, caring for her (nameless) toddler son while her husband is frequently away on a job that smells suspiciously like management consulting. “Mother”1 has put aside her career as a visual artist to step into the role of stay-at-home mom, but she begins to question that decision as motherhood pushes and challenges her to a new level of delulu. In the stress and uncertainty, she begins to feel like she’s transforming into a dog—I think literally? But maybe just figuratively, perhaps you can catch the scent better than I.
It's a clever metaphor, that the strain of being a mom can contort you into a beast you don't recognize. Adams has been an underrated actress for over a decade, and Nightbitch works primarily because of her uninhibitedness and comedic wit. The film is best when it’s twisted and sardonic, and worst when it tries too hard to fit into a genre mold.2 Audiences are not always Enchanted by poetic justice and fixing for easy resolution—overuse of cliché is hardly the hair of the dog that bit(ch) you.
I hope that they re-cut the trailer before U.S. wide release, preferably with some better music.3 Searchlight Pictures succeeds when it commits to the indie genre—Nomadland, The French Dispatch, Kinds of Kindness—and fails when it panders to the Letterboxd mafia by pushing out movies that only make for intriguing trailers—The Menu, Fire Island, and Downhill. The marketing tagline that Nightbitch is a “comedy for women, and a horror movie for men” is much closer to the level of genre subversion that I want from Searchlight—retreating back into the comforts of rom-com’s bosom is just barking up the wrong tree. But in the context of this month’s news cycle, she’s still the more fortunate Adams.
Nightbitch premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, and will be available in theaters worldwide soon.
After Watching:
Hear me out—a new adaption Porktwink where a chronically online gay socialite is convinced he’s turning into Moo Deng. I’m casting Drew Tarver, or maybe Brian Jordan Alvarez.
My main bone to gnaw with Nightbitch is the ending. The genre of 2000s-2010s mainstream comedies has been gradually fading from relevance, but the falling action of Nightbitch is a vestige of this dying medium—it’s evident that the dog days are far from over (sorry, Florence). One externality of this format is the persistent cliché that once the protagonist recognizes the problem, all obstacles melt away and every character gets the neat conclusion they deserve. I could have skipped the scene where Father realizes what a dumb-dumb he’s been at the exact moment that Mother’s grad school friends face their fear of the suburbs. Judd Apatow and Adam McKay are probably somewhere (between blood transfusions) feeling arousal for the first time since Bros.
Bilge Ebiri writes in Vulture:
There’s a weak, Hollywood-friendly structure here of lessons learned and conflicts resolved, but beyond Mother’s insular world of ambition and longing and stasis, nothing has been fleshed out in a way that supports the story. The film perches itself between projection and reality ... so that we never quite know if what we’re seeing is fact or not. So the movie goes in circles, constantly expounding on the same things. It has lots of insight, but little momentum.
I believe the pun you’re looking for is “all bark and no bite”? I mostly agree, but I view the pedantry and confusion as part of the bottom line. Yes, the plot is unconvincing and circular, but isn’t that kind of the point? I guess modern film critique journalism is too much of a dog-eat-dog world for nuance. More like Air Dud.
And no I’m not saying that in a Mike Pence way, that’s just how she’s referenced in other coverage…