‘Nightbitch’ a Canine Critique of Societal Expectations

Amy Adams stars as a frustrated mom who turns into a dog in Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch. The premise is wild but the film occasionally lacks bite.

As the tagline says, motherhood is a bitch. The exhaustion, the frustration, the constant little sacrifices we expect mothers to make to raise children when we rarely ask the same from fathers, all of it feels incredibly unfair. It’s a miracle all our moms didn’t completely lose their minds.

In Nightbitch, Amy Adams is an artist-turned-stay-at-home-mom whose frustrations manifest in increasingly animalistic ways, leaving her to believe she might be turning into a dog.

Early scenes show her trying to manage life with her young son (played by twins Arleigh and Emmet Snowden) while her husband (Scoot McNairy) is away, but we see that he’s little help to her once he returns. She attends a regular social gathering for moms and kids and starts to befriend three other mothers (Zoë Chao, Mary Holland, and Archana Rajan), but life still feels overwhelming. After reading a book recommended by librarian Norma (Jessica Harper), she starts to let her inner animal out.

It’s a wacky premise that frames an emotionally driven message about gender and power dynamics, both within a family unit and in society as a whole. 

While the message is important and the premise, adapted from the novel by Rachel Yoder, is certainly creative, the film can occasionally lack the bite needed to elevate it beyond “being a mom is tough.” 

It’s not breaking news to say that motherhood is incredibly difficult, especially in the current economy. It’s practically common knowledge that women end up doing the majority of the domestic labor in a family and that they’re often underappreciated, their work undervalued. It’s still regular practice for a woman to have to give up her career or her passions for several years—and often forever—if she wants to have a family.

When a movie has a wild premise like “What if a frustrated mother turned into a dog?” I would hope that it could give me something equally wild in how it delivered its themes, but Nightbitch can sometimes feel way too tame.

We see Mother, our main character, digging in the yard, running through the streets with dogs, even hunting small animals, but then it’s right back to the real world and scrambling to keep up with a toddler. 

Let’s revel in the craziness for a while longer. Let’s see her unleashed and going fully feral. I was ready for her to break from her pleasant, domestic world, complete with an aesthetic like something out of an iPhone commercial, and to dive into something a bit more edgy, but the film never quite goes there.

I was unsurprised to learn that Nightbitch was originally slated for a Hulu release but was given a theatrical run after a positive festival reception. This feels like a film I would enjoy on Hulu. It’s not quite ambitious enough or groundbreaking enough to generate run-to-the-theater word of mouth, but it’s certainly worth checking out from the comfort of your couch.