Nightbitch
review by Bobby Blakey
Director Marielle Heller has been making a name for herself with some great films under her filmography including The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, and A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood. Her latest film, Nightbitch brings together another great cast including Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Arleigh Snowden, Emmett Snowden, Jessica Harper, Zoe Chao, Mary Holland, and Archana Rajan. Could this film offer some sort of unique look at motherhood, or will it fail to accept the difficulty and change?
Nightbitch follows a woman, thrown into the stay-at-home routine of raising a toddler in the suburbs, slowly embraces the feral power deeply rooted in motherhood, as she becomes increasingly aware of the bizarre and undeniable signs that she may be turning into a dog.
I saw the trailer for this one and had a different thought of what this film was going to be, but it was something so different. I was pleasantly surprised to the depths this film is actually dealing with as opposed to the idea I thought we were going with. The pacing is a bit slow at times, but overall manages to work in the narrative it is trying to focus on.
For those thinking that this is some werewolf like stuff be warned it couldn’t be further from that. There is no horror element here in any way, but instead a unique look at the stresses and chaos of motherhood in a creative way. There are aspects that are meant to make you ponder if everything going on is really happening, whether she is having a breakdown or is it all just a metaphor for struggling mothers and what they deal with. Either way it works for all of the above.
The primary reason this film works is for Adams herself. She goes all in physically and emotionally to take this character on a journey of stress, anger, depression, hope, happiness and self-discovery wrapped in a unique way that is all its own. The rest of the cast are good as well, but this is Adams show all around.
The film is a fusion of family, frustration and transformation that takes a unique approach to all the subjects to a successful end. If you have never seen the trailer, then skip it and go into the film fresh with no expectations. If you have seen it, go into it with no expectations because it has a unique voice to listen to on a familiar subject and issue.
Decide for yourself and check out Nightbitch streaming now on Hulu.