Grade: B-
As Nightbitch is about the trials and tribulations of a stay-at-home mom to a 2-year-old boy, I almost felt like nobody wants to hear what someone like me thought of it. I almost felt like it’s not made for me. Maybe it isn’t, directly, but I’ve played a part in this story. Men – and women who are not mothers – don’t need to feel left out. We all used to be babies and toddlers, and therefore, early in our lives we put a woman through what Amy Adams experiences in Nightbitch. So, in a way, to varying degrees, we’re all included somehow.
However, if you are a mother, particularly a new one, Nightbitch will speak to you more than most. This is a screenplay with something to say, and I can see it generating applause breaks from its target audience. Adams plays a character known only as Mother. She gave up, or at least put on hold, her career as a painter/artist to be a stay-at-home mother to her son, now 2. The father, billed as Husband, is on business trips for most of the week.
Mother starts getting some unusual symptoms. Her sense of smell is more heightened than ever before, and she’s suddenly developed a taste for rare meat. She is growing a tail. Ultimately, she becomes a full-fledged dog, going on runs at night. Instead of Teen Wolf, it’s 40-something Stay At Home Mom Dog. Or…you know. Whatever is going on, this discovery is making her feel the most alive she has felt in two years.
This is among the best work Adams, a 6-time Oscar nominee, has done. She’s not afraid to be vulnerable and have some uncomfortable closeups. As her husband, Scoot McNairy is so great at playing husbands who are good people deep down inside, but suffer from the common male instinct to want to immediately solve or fix everything, rather than give the women in their lives space to just feel how they feel for a little while. He played a very similar role earlier this year in Speak No Evil. The arguments between them don’t present him as completely wrong, nor do they paint her as a blameless innocent saint. You can identify with both sides.
Is there a documentary out there about how actors/directors in film and TV work with extremely young child actors (maybe age 5 and below)? I’d rather see that than watch Nightbitch again. Arleigh and Emmett Snowden, the twins who play the son, are absolutely adorable and thoroughly convincing. However they get babies or toddlers to bond with actors as if they really are their parents is something I’m very interested in seeing.
I don’t know that the movie completely earns its weirdness, or that the metaphor coalesces in a satisfying way. The best reasons to see Nightbitch are the sharp observations in the script, and a fearless, anchoring lead performance that keeps the movie from getting too silly too often. My first internet search after watching this was “is Amy Adams a mother?” She is. Of course she is. If you want to find out what provided me with my biggest laugh, Google “Nightbitch walnut line.” It’s there.
Grade: B-
Film Reviews by Mark 
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