Film Review: NIGHTBITCH: An Intriguing Concept Disappointingly Wasted [London 2024]

Nightbitch Review

Nightbitch (2024) Film Review from the 68th Annual London Film Festival, a movie directed by Marielle Heller, written by Marielle Heller and starring Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Arleigh Patrick Snowden, Emmett James Snowden, Zoë Chao, Mary Holland, Ella Thomas, Archana Rajanand, Jessica Harper and Adrienne Rose.

Effective contraception. This is how Nightbitch will be described in one-liners and quips by critics and audiences, and truly Marielle Heller’s adaptation is a strong statement on the difficulties of motherhood. Comical while dead serious, Nightbitch has a lot to say but very little to show, in a film that feels more suited to the theatre than the cinematic medium in its excess of monologues. Amy Adams is always a delight however, and manages to strike both a comedic and serious tone simultaneously in this weird oddity of a film.

A new mother who has given up her career and life to become a stay-at-home mom, Amy Adams’ character, simply named ‘Mother”, begins to undergo changes and eventual transformations into a dog. It is an odd and intriguing concept, played out in the film as a sort of quasi-magical realist story where motherhood causes profound change in a woman. It has all the right complexities and ideas about the hardships of motherhood in both a modern and historical context, revelatory and agreeable. And yet, in the telling, it is more informative than it is evocative.

The film fails, for the most part, to externalise the internal, to visualise the spoken. The thoughts and feelings of Amy Adams are expressed directly and plainly in inner monologues or speeches to her husband or friends. There is great delivery by Adams, who always hits her comedic and dramatic timing, but little else is offered from the film outside of this. It becomes tiresome and repetitive, literal and without subtlety, rather than its ideas and themes feeling integrated with cinematic integrity.

And yet the concept was there, ripe for exploration. The ideas of motherhood as wholly changing, its animalistic beastliness, the strong and primal power within mothers. It was ready to explore the societal and marital complexities of motherhood, and yet it chooses to tell rather than show, and explain itself away. Its central concept is practically wasted, portrayed with little intensity or grit one would’ve expected from such a title as Nightbitch. Its scenes of canine transformations and excavations are not evocative, nor do they express anything that the film hasn’t already disappointingly exposed in speech. The allegorical potential for such an idea is sadly made surface-level.

The film does manage to work in its arguments though, imbuing its story with earned empathy and satisfying resolutions for its characters. Scoot McNairy works well with Adams, never fully alienated by the film where it condemns him, culminating into a genuine, understanding, and compromising relationship between the two. They both balance the emotional difficulty of their roles in parenthood and marriage while continuously striking the comedic chord required for the film, at least definitely in Adams’ case.

But a strong, anchored performance by Adams doesn’t do much to rectify the overly expository nature of Nightbitch. An exciting premise is unfortunately wasted, its cinematic potential squandered in place of internal monologuing that becomes tedious, even in the validity of its arguments. It is however funny, charming, and slightly absurd, which redeems the film from falling into total failure. And still, we are left with something rather average for such an unusual idea.

Rating: 5.5/10

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