Nobody was taking writer/director Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch seriously after the trailer debuted. And yet, Searchlight Pictures, originally having planned to take the film directly to Hulu, opted to give the film a prime awards season-friendly theatrical release, as well as premiering the film at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it received mixed-to-positive feedback. But following films like The Diary of a Teenage Girl and Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Marielle Heller has become one of my favorite filmmakers, so I felt pretty confident I would enjoy Nightbitch when I pressed play on my screener the other night. And it brings me joy to say I was mostly right, and the sight-unseen Nightbitch haters were wrong.

An unnamed wife and mother of a toddler (Amy Adams) has had it with her new life as a stay-at-home mom. She’s exhausted, her husband (Scoot McNairy) is always away at work, and she has no help. She’s put her life and career on hold, and she’s also losing track of the person she’s always wanted to be, and she feels like her life has become meaningless. Things take a turn for the weird after one night, she starts to suspect she’s turning into a dog. 

Nightbitch is Marielle Heller’s weakest film, and yet it’s still pretty damn good. It’s a fascinating endeavor with a ferocious and furious performance by Amy Adams. This admittedly absurd premise is basically a delivery device for lots of really juicy Amy Adams monologues, and I feel like a lot of this is probably more naturally executed in the form of Rachel Yoder’s novel that Heller has adapted. However, the screen presence Amy Adams has always had completely drives this one home. She brings you into this story and this character the moment we begin, and she holds the audience in her grasp throughout the runtime. It’s one of her best performances, and fully gives her the agency and emotional real estate to explore this character in the most effective way she can. 

How does this film handle the body-horror element at play here? It kind of doesn’t. From the moment we begin, it’s kind of clear our protagonist is maybe an unreliable narrator. We see how she wants to react in certain moments, and how she really does. And it’s not entirely clear if any of this insanity is happening anywhere outside of her own mind. I thought of Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance a lot during this, and that’s a sharper film about this kind of feminine rage and the absurd societal standards women face. But I still feel like if I saw this in a theater full of moms who have maybe had a few drinks, and have made their way to the theater on a girls’ night out, it would still be a great time.

Marielle Heller’s script is well paced and fairly exciting, but it’s also painting in broad strokes and feels like it’s trying to be more about the universal experience of motherhood, as opposed to a study of this one character. And that’s an approach to take, but perhaps not the most satisfying one. But I would have liked to have gotten to know our central character a little better, rather than focusing on all these narratively familiar moments that feel a bit cloying. Heller also could have gone a lot more weird with this, and fully leaned into the absurdity of this premise. And this is especially evident in the way the film wraps up, she’s playing it a little too safe and the ending feels very neat-and-tidy while there might have been some profundity in the potential murkiness of it all. Also there is a disturbing plot element involving the family pet cat that did not sit well with me, and you should know about that before you go in.

Overall, Nightbitch is not the definitive film about the horrors of motherhood that it could have been, but there is a lot to take away from this. Amy Adams is, as usual, giving every bit of herself in this performance, and she’s a thrill to watch at every moment. And while the sharpness of the satire dulls as the film goes on, Marielle Heller is absolutely getting more right here than wrong. If you’re a mother of a young child, I would absolutely suggest arranging for a babysitter and having a night out with friends that involves a trip to the cinema to see Nightbitch. I feel like this is going to be an emotionally cathartic experience for a lot of viewers and that’s enough to earn it a recommendation.