Nightbitch (Heller, 2024)

Nightbitch’s main force can be found in Amy Adams’ delightful performance.

Writtem by Kenza Bouhnass-Parra

The film follows a woman who decides to become a stay at home mom to not only raise her child, her husband is oftentimes traveling for work, but also to fully embrace her new role. When signs of bodily transformation start appearing, her life takes a sharp turn as she starts believing that she is turning into a dog.

Motherhood, and the brutality of the changes it brings socially but also physically, is still an underrepresented subject on screen.  Nightbitch, adapted from the novel of the same name written by Rachel Yoder, takes an unusual swing in portraying changes new mothers go through and how isolating they end up being from the plain lack of mention and representation of them. It is a pretty straightforward narrative with at times a simplistic screenplay, but its sincerity nonetheless reaches the spectator, when the story is stripped bare of its absurd elements and all is left is a woman struggling with unexplained changes in her body which creates a solitude at a time in her life where community is craved.

Some of the body horror aspects of the film are somehow underwhelming, which can be surprising when first reading the synopsis. The transformative aspects are somehow too close to our reality, the line between the allegory and its meaning too blurred for the metaphor to truly take form. Keeping the transformations to visuals we could encounter in our daily lives is useful at first to grab the public’s attention, but it ends up creating a disconnect between the protagonist’s alarmist state of mind and how she is being perceived. It is understandable that this could be the thesis of what the film is trying to convey, with dropping us into a realistic experience, but for a narrative based on such a preposterous element, the spectator needs to buy, visually, into what the character is trying to express.

The choice of the transformation remaining close to our usual visuals propels Amy Adams’ face at the centre of every scene. And she is an absolwithbliss to follow along. Her innate charisma holds the attention of the spectator when the films falters in other aspects and creates a feeling of maternal safety that remains a warm presence all throughout. She is accompanied with just an as enchanting cast, especially her son played by Arleigh Snowden.

Nightbitch poses as an endearing film with a fresh depiction of motherhood and its struggles, and a lovely lead performance. It cannot help but with is had pushed the absurdity of the physical and metaphorical aspects to a greater degree, which might have led to a more effective depiction of body.

Photo credits : Searchlight Pictures