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Nightbitch looked interesting. I didn’t really know much about the story, but when I read the synopsis, I thought I had to give it a try. How bad could it be? Sigh, pretty bad.
Nightbitch stars Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Jassica Harper, Zoe Chao, Mary Holland and Archana Rajan. Marielle Heller is the writer director, based on the novel by Rachel Yoder.
The Story
I read that it was a dark comedy, about a woman turning into a dog. Sounds interesting, right? The official story is:
A woman pauses her career to be a stay-at-home mom, but soon her domesticity takes a surreal turn.
Mother (Adams) was running a gallery and a budding artist, but things changed when she had her son. Her husband (McNairy) works away and she is a stay-at-home mum. Her day is a routine of one thing after another, after another, after another.
She starts to notice things about herself that are changing. She has a heightened sense of smell, small patches of hair on her body and six extra nipples. She starts to embrace this change and starts to feel more canine. She even starts to encourage her young son to act like a dog as well. Might as well in this day and age.
In the end of Nightbitch, we see she is able to control her urges, balance work life and motherhood and she has a daughter.
The Cast
Amy Adams is an amazing actress, I can’t say I’m a huge fan of hers, but I appreciate her work. In Nightbitch she gives another amazing performance, you genuinely believe she is the mother to the young lad (who are played by twins).
She shows herself, warts and all, in this and is very honestly about her body. She’s not a supermodel that’s been air brushed and been through more filters than an Instagram ‘model’. It was nice to see her focusing on her performance.
I like McNairy, he seems like a cool guy. He plays the father well while trying to understand what the hell is going on with his wife. Is she going mad? Is it the menopause? Should she be encouraging their son to be a dog as well?
I’m Probably Wrong
I feel that Nightbitch is a much deeper movie than the likes of me can understand. I don’t have kids and I’ve never given birth. This movie is aimed more at parents, because of this, I have a weird take on the movie.
I wouldn’t call this a dark comedy, because I didn’t really see any humour in it. For me, this was like a werewolf movie, but without the lycanthropy. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it was a werewolf movie, but written by a feminist.
In a good old werewolf movie, you have some guy, bitten by a wolf, then he changes and goes on a killer spree, sorted. In Nightbitch, yes, the mother does change into a dog and, at one point, kills the cat. But that’s about it, before the lycanthropy can fully take over, she learnt to control it and even subdue it.
A man would just let his animal instincts take over and kill, kill, kill. Not so much with a woman, she can control her urges and power through it. As I said, I might be missing the point widely here, but I just didn’t get it.
Overall
Nightbitch isn’t the dark comedy it sounded like. It’s more of a tale about dealing with motherhood, handling the pressure of work and being a mum, all while being generally awesome as a woman.
If this was more like The Fly, happy days, but it’s like The Fly if Jeff could just control himself and not go full-on, vomit-eating Brundle-Fly. It’s The Fly but with feelings and emotions, and no sense of humour.
This is like the thinking woman’s Barbie. Barbie was all bright colours and ‘isn’t feminism great’, where this is for the thinking woman who’s probably never been on Tiktok.
I didn’t like the Nightbitch, I didn’t get much out of it and I won’t watch it again. You might get different mileage from it, but I know our Outposters, it’s not a movie for you. It’s now on VoD.
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