Nightbitch (2024)

I was a little worried about first about Nightbitch as it felt so heavy handed and on the nose during its first act. It almost felt a little too. easy to dismiss as we watch Adams' character extol the almost cliche tropes about how hard motherhood is and how misunderstood it is. But as the film drew on I came to see that was some of the point. Because we do dismiss the real pain and difficulties of how motherhood is both extremely challenging and exacerbated by our cultural norms and understandings of the way parenthood is gendered and both lauded yet devalued in so many ways. 

By the end of Nightbitch, I was finding myself quite moved by a film that while highly critical of western cultural assumptions was also lovingly optimistic about motherhood specifically. Nightbitch is unapologetically gendered, focusing on very binary critiques of how child bearing women are harmed by the western hegemony. Sure families are formed and grow into far more multitudinous variations, but this film is focused appropriately and squarely on the traditional western family make up, it sharpens its claws and after baring its soul, holds us close to remind us love is still possible on the other side of this deconstruction. 

Adams gives a great performances that moves past the film's first rather one note struggle to show something more complex in her character, who is capable of both loving her male child with all her heart but also acknowledging the ways his mere existence threatens hers as a human. And if there is anything more universal here as a message it is how much we own our children the modelling of how to be a human being, a full human being, and not just a servant to their growth. They need to see, and the film makes a point of gendering this specifically too without ruling out that it is relevant to all of us, our daughters need to see their mothers being whole human beings so they can learn to be that too. They need to see their fathers and the world around them celebrate their mothers being whole human beings. 

Nightbith might fumble a few times throughout but by the end it is remarkable how powerful its story is, even when it is being rather expected. The film's marketing and reputations makes a lot of its animal metaphor, an idea that becomes far more metaphor than literal by the end, and instead it becomes far more grounded than one would expect. A lot of this falls on Adams and how well she navigates her role and how beautifully she lives into it. 

Nightbitch

Starring: Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Arleigh Snowden, Emmett Snowden, Zoë Chao 

Writer/Director: Marielle Heller