Nightbitch Review: LFF 2024
Amy Adams goes absolutely barking mad in Nightbitch (…sorry)
We’ve heard of hot girl Summer yes, but with first The Substance, fellow London Film Festival title Sister Midnight and now Nightbitch it feels like we’re truly entering feral girl Fall. The women in these films are mad, gory and completely ungovernable.
The fourth feature from writer/director Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) Nightbitch is a comedy drama meets body horror adapted from the bestselling novel of the same name by Rachel Yoder.
‘Mother’ (Amy Adams) is a first-time mum to a two-year-old son and having a rough time of it as ‘Husband’ (Scoot McNairy) is often away on long work trips, leaving her to parent alone. Mother was previously a successful artist but gave up her gallery to be a stay-at-home mum, and is finding it much harder that she ever expected. Lamenting that she has nothing in common with all the vapid mums she meets at parent groups, she is overworked, exhausted and has absolutely no one to talk to about it.
Mother starts to display some bizarre symptoms; she’s short tempered with her family and suffering weird dreams; she develops an insatiable taste for meat, grows hair in weird places and, er, some extra nipples too. While she initially puts it down to symptoms of menopause, she soon starts to realise she is turning into a dog at night and rampaging about the town. Yes, an actual dog.
Nightbitch is a furious howl of a film about the frustrations of motherhood and the unfair position women are still forced into in society. Mother is losing herself to her role – she’s lost her job; her childless friends no longer speak to her, she feels her brain is turning into mush and her husband only adds to her workload not lessens it. At a time when she is completely losing her sense of self, turning into a feral beast becomes a way of finding her own innate sense of power again.
It’s worth seeing for Amy Adams’ performance alone. A Jekyll and Hyde character, she injects so much humour into all her frustrated monologues while switching back and fore between trying to be a Stepford Wife and just letting loose. It’s a very funny film but also a rare chance to see someone of her calibre really get the chance to play. She is snarling, ferocious, force of nature that absolutely lights up the screen.
I do wish that Heller had been bold enough to lean further into the full batshit insanity of this plot, as it goes quite light on the body horror before leading into a very safe and unsatisfying final act. Where Mother is all spite and rage at her situation at the beginning and we get all sorts of intriguing threads that might explain what is going on (rather than just suggesting it is all in her head – boring) it ultimately doesn’t lead to an explosive finale or any meaningful explanation. The film ends not with a howl but a whimper.
Still, Nightbitch is worth a watch and I’m happy to see such a delightfully free and unhinged performance from Amy Adams being put out there for all the world to see. I’ve never been more scared of parenthood. More feral films please, we don’t want safe.
Nightbitch is playing as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2024. It is scheduled to be released in cinemas on 6th December 2024
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