Nightbitch Review & Explained: A Ferocious Portrait of the Dark Truths Motherhood

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Go to http://ro.co/take to find out if you’re covered for free.🐺 Nightbitch is a searing, painful portrait of motherhood – where the titular character just happens to lose herself so...

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00:00Night Bitch is a searing, painful portrait of motherhood, where the titular character

00:04just happens to lose herself so dramatically in parenthood that she winds up turning into

00:08a dog.

00:09It was a hit book in 2021 and has been adapted for the screen by Marielle Heller, with Amy

00:15Adams in the lead role.

00:16So does the film live up to the gritty surrealness of the book?

00:20And what does it really have to say about the experience of trying to hold onto your

00:23own individual personhood while being consumed by motherhood and societal expectations?

00:29And could this finally be Amy Adams' Oscar moment?

00:33Here's our take.

00:34We've never seen motherhood portrayed on screen in quite the way that Night Bitch presents

00:38it.

00:39While there have been more honest interpretations making their way into the mainstream recently,

00:43a lot of these focus on mothers who struggle to bond with their children or find the weight

00:47of maternal expectation crushing.

00:49I abandoned them and I didn't see them for three years.

00:52The difference with Night Bitch is that it actually shows a far more average setup for

00:56the most part.

00:57The lead character, mother by day, Night Bitch when her son is sleeping, doesn't shy

01:01away from the joy and beauty of motherhood.

01:04But it's also open about a real taboo.

01:06She finds her life as a stay-at-home mom incredibly difficult.

01:10Although she clearly adores him, she doesn't want her entire life to revolve around just her

01:15toddler.

01:16She finds the day-to-day of parenthood grueling and monotonous.

01:19She misses her career as an artist.

01:22Yet she shows up every day and plays with him, engages with him and makes sure he has

01:27a great time.

01:28And it doesn't feel like she's masking or faking in these moments because he really does

01:32light up her world.

01:33It's more when she's doing the repetitive tasks, making breakfast, trying to get a wired

01:38kid to sleep, that she struggles to find joy.

01:41And the movie puts forward a really important idea, that maybe, just maybe, every second

01:47of parenthood isn't a joy.

01:50In this way, it's an accurate depiction of the duality of the experience.

01:54Night Bitch's feelings about what motherhood is meant for her don't change how she feels

01:58about him.

01:59As Katrina Onstad wrote for the New York Times, the movie shows that it's possible to be a

02:03good mom and monstrous too.

02:06Director Marielle Heller says,

02:08What I wanted to say about motherhood as somebody who is a mother is that you can have

02:13complicated feelings about it and it doesn't mean that you don't want to be a parent.

02:17This complexity is rich fodder for Heller and Adams, who often explore the stark dichotomy

02:22of parenthood in a single scene.

02:24For example, in one scene, Night Bitch encourages her son to make a mess,

02:28laying out a huge sheet of paper and assorted paint on the kitchen floor.

02:31But while it starts well, he quickly starts pushing the boundaries,

02:35smearing paint on the walls and then running out of the room.

02:38And when Night Bitch goes to follow him, she slips in paint and cracks her back on the floor.

02:43This scene exemplifies how parenthood defies planning sometimes,

02:47how you can go into moments with your kids with the best of intentions and come out humbled.

02:52And it's something that Adams identifies with too.

02:55It does change you so much. And I think that sort of investment

02:59in another life and just like that sort of focus and the time and the energy and the love

03:05that you feel really does transform you.

03:07In its tragic exploration of Night Bitch's own mother's story,

03:11the gifted singer who once believed she might make it in Europe,

03:14before she married within her Mennonite community and had children.

03:17The film also explores how these patterns are not exclusive to our current generation of mothers.

03:22The sacrifice expected from women when they become parents isn't new.

03:26But Night Bitch puts forward the idea that we can be the cycle breakers.

03:30In Rachel Yoder's book, Night Bitch's husband is aloof and rarely present,

03:34as work draws him away from home so often.

03:37But when he is there, he's more responsive to Night Bitch than the character in the movie.

03:42In the film, he's a little pluckier, angrier, and perhaps more pathetic.

03:47When Heller was interviewed about the character, she said,

03:49The husband is not an asshole. He's not intending to not get what's happening to her.

03:54But there's so little time to even discuss what's happening in your brain when you're parenting.

04:00He's clueless to what she's experiencing and going through.

04:03But still, the comparison between the two different father characters is striking.

04:07In early interviews and reviews, the film was termed a comedy for women and a horror for men.

04:13A lot was made of the body horror aspect of the movie.

04:16The gruesome moment when Night Bitch pops a cyst on her back and draws out a stringy tail from it.

04:21And the fact that the filmmakers chose to show her menstrual blood in the shower.

04:25But some of the most horrifying parts of the movie are actually father's tone-deaf platitudes

04:30and total ambivalence towards his wife's needs.

04:33Although Heller is quick to reassure that her rewrite of father isn't a villain,

04:37there are points when he fails to be proactive with his son when he is around,

04:41when he doesn't support her wish to return back to work,

04:44when he dares to ask his wife where the woman he married went.

04:48Where we see that the lived reality of so many women who have kids with average non-villainous men

04:54is pretty bleak actually.

04:56At first, Night Bitch hates taking her son to organized events for kids.

05:00She visibly recoils when she realizes she's arrived at the library just as the book babies club is starting.

05:06She resents the other mothers who all appear blissful and put together,

05:09kind of like the real-life social media mommies who present an outwardly idyllic idea of motherhood on Instagram.

05:15But as the movie progresses, Mother turns into Night Bitch and realizes that all the other moms are dogs as well.

05:22Not just the moms at the baby groups, but her own mother too.

05:26One of the key ideas this movie opens up is that actually, whether we like it or not,

05:30motherhood is a bond. And other mothers can be the people who will understand you the best.

05:36Not your old college friends, not your husband, but the women you meet in the trenches of parenting,

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06:43The film is quite different from the novel. Perhaps in part because it's difficult to translate

06:51the book's specific style of magical realism on screen.

06:54Because we're changing forms, right? So obviously it has to be different in a visual form. I mean,

07:02for me, I feel like the essence of the book is in the movie.

07:07Although there are definitely some disturbing visuals in the movie, for the most part it's not as graphic.

07:12In the book, there are some fairly intense scenes.

07:15Where the lead character kills the family cat in her human form, in front of her toddler.

07:20In the movie, the death of the cat happens, but off screen.

07:23And it's implied that she kills it in her dog form.

07:26Director Mariel Heller wrote the script and used her own experiences to add to the novel's plot.

07:30So there are more significant changes too.

07:33For example, the husband character is a little more useless in the movie.

07:37This is framed as both of the characters' fault.

07:39She and father haven't really communicated effectively sort of how there would be an equitable

07:44division inside of the home. So she's sort of taken on the bulk of responsibility of parenthood.

07:50But in the book, when Night Bitch begins to demand he do more with their son,

07:54the father character sits up and takes notice. Perhaps as a result of that, in the book,

07:58the pair don't actually split up. Their relationship becomes stronger as a result of her boundary setting.

08:04And their sexual relationship becomes richer because he embraces her dog side.

08:08They don't have a second child in the end of the book, either.

08:11This really changed the way the story ended.

08:13In the novel, we get this sense that the mother has returned to making art as though it's a primal need.

08:18Which she must approach with the same ferocity and energy as she does parenting.

08:23The movie, however, ends with mother having a home birth.

08:26From being told by her doula that she's going to meet her daughter.

08:29Which, although poetic in its symmetry of Night Bitch giving birth to a potential future Night Bitch,

08:34did seem to soften the message at the core of the story.

08:37Will this be Amy Adams' big Oscar moment? We hope so.

08:41Adams uses every string in the bow of her phenomenal acting talent in this movie.

08:46At once vulnerable and vicious, sweet and sexy, maternal and manic.

08:50We can see her capabilities as she plays the same scene twice, back to back.

08:54Delivering an anxious, desperate monologue about parenthood to a former colleague in the supermarket.

08:59Which turns out to be imagined when we then see her respond with a wide smile and a nod of assent.

09:04Though some of the brutality of the book was lost in the film, Adams becomes genuinely feral-seeming

09:10as Night Bitch imagines attacking her husband when he interrupts her alone time.

09:14And she fully leans into the moment where the character becomes more dog-like.

09:18Eating ravenously off plates with her face, running on all floors through the park.

09:22And notably, she was unafraid to become Night Bitch physically too.

09:26Even growing out her chin hairs for a scene where she finds herself becoming fuzzy, as her son called it.

09:31That is my actual chin hair, so I grew them out for Maury.

09:34Yeah. I was like, you know I can grow all of that for you.

09:37Another potential indicator is that Adams was awarded the Toronto International Film Festival's

09:42TIFF Tribute Performer Award back in June.

09:44Accolade that's been linked to eventual Oscar winners.

09:47But though this created a buzz at the time,

09:49film critics claim Night Bitch won't be Adams' well-deserved Oscar win.

09:53Citing the movie as being too difficult to sell for the Academy Awards.

09:57Adams herself told IndieWire that winning an Oscar...

10:00It's not something I think about when I approach a role or when I walk on a red carpet,

10:04but I'm always happy if the film connects in a way that increases exposure for the film.

10:08And it does seem like she has other motives for taking the role.

10:11It genuinely feels like this is a character that Adams connects with on a deep level.

10:16She, like so many members of the audience, is Night Bitch.

10:19Has experienced the soaring highs and crashing lows of motherhood.

10:23Recognizes the constant struggle to be a good enough parent.

10:27We don't talk about it and there's this bar of expectation that just keeps moving.

10:32And it's just so frustrating because you never feel like you meet all of the expectations.

10:36And I think inside of a world that's very comparative, it's easy to think you're not doing enough.

10:42He's mentioned in a lot of the press around the movie that people keep sharing their postpartum

10:47stories with her and this seems to genuinely touch her.

10:50Whether she wins awards for the performance or not,

10:52she's the perfect embodiment of a character that so many people have loved since she first

10:57wagged her tail on the page.

10:59When the Night Bitch trailer first dropped,

11:01fans of the book worried that the movie wouldn't live up to their expectations.

11:04But as Meredith Blake wrote in the LA Times,

11:07the trailer made Night Bitch seem like a wacky mom-com version of Teen Wolf,

11:12rather than what it is. A surreal, insightful film about the joys and anguish of motherhood.

11:17And the sometimes disturbing ways that becoming a parent can transform women's minds,

11:22bodies, emotional lives, and entire sense of self.

11:26Although the movie doesn't quite hit the dizzyingly surreal levels that the book does,

11:30it's still beautiful. At times heartbreaking, at others hilarious,

11:35and always one of the rawest interpretations of motherhood that we've ever seen on screen.

11:40We are so powerful.

11:45I bet men are terrified of us.

11:47That's the take. Click here to watch the video we think you'll love.

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