A Ferocious Novel Gets Spayed

Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder’s barbaric yawp of a bestseller from 2021, snaps back at the constraints of modern, middle-class motherhood, leaving blood and bones in its wake. So it’s a shame that its movie adaptation has all the bite of a played out thinkpiece. If you’re worried that Marielle Heller – whose most notable works include the awards-friendly biopics A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and Can You Ever Forgive Me? – was the wrong choice for this project, I’m sorry to report your instincts are correct. In Nightbitch, Heller and her team neuter – or, more accurately, spay – a novel beloved by hordes of fed-up women.

Amy Adams plays the protagonist, known simply as Mother, a middle-aged stay-at-home mom of a toddler. Mother has grown to resent her decision to put her art career on hold and care for her son full-time, and likewise resents her husband (Scoot McNairy) who is out of town five nights a week for work. When she starts growing excess hair in surprising spots on her body and a feral lust for meat, Mother suspects she may be turning into a dog. Unfortunately, that’s about as deep as Heller’s script takes this premise. Mother offers lots (lots) of thesis-statement-esque soliloquies about how difficult it is to juggle the roles of woman, wife, and mother, but the timid movie she’s in is all tell and no show, offering little catharsis or character development. (It’s worth noting that a grittier movie about a stay-at-home-mom who dreams of pursuing art and who, spurred by her husband’s absenteeism, adopts a canine persona, has already been made: Marianna Palka’s 2017 oddity Bitch.) Mother has created a prison of her own design – she must be home full-time, with no babysitter to lend a hand, for absolutely no discernible reason – and she’s not even allowed to really gnaw at the bars.

You don’t need to read Yoder’s novel to sense that some of its most gut-wrenching, challenging passages weren’t translated to the screen. Despite its punchy title, this Nightbitch is far too tidy, Mother’s home and hair as clean as the movie’s ridiculously pat ending; the most grotesque scene involves Mother lancing a pus-filled protuberance on her lower back. Charming though Adams always is, Nightbitch conjures her Disney princess past more than it does her Sharp Objects stint. The script fails to balance the two truths inherent to Mother as a character: She is a bumbling, basic mom and she is a ferocious, keenly intelligent creature. Nearly everything in Nightbitch feels twee, winking – a sin no more aptly signaled than when Mother eventually turns into an actual dog (some kind of silken-furred, husky-ish breed), rather than the unsettling were-creature depicted in the book.

Nightbitch is perfectly watchable, and it does the satisfying work of putting a new mother character on-screen who actually looks the part. It is truly excellent to see A-lister Adams – who once played the title character in an episode of The Office simply called “Hot Girl” – embody an average human woman. Unfortunately, Mother is stuck spinning her wheels, feeling victimized by her own life, and refusing to look inward. Talk about disempowering.

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