Review: Cheers to Adams for delivering a fearless portrayal of a woman on the verge of imploding in ‘Nightbitch’

It’s a daring premise: The reliably up-for-anything Amy Adams plays an artist (she specializes in sculptures and installations) who pauses her career to become a stay-at-home mom who is so at the mercy of a bawling infant that she morphs into a feral dog in protest. New moms will relate.

“Nightbitch,” the film take by writer-director Marielle Heller of Rachel Yoder 2021 bestseller, is now in theaters where it lures you into expecting the shock of the unexpected. All of which it does until, well, it doesn’t. You can feel the disappointment in the pit of your stomach.

But let’s start with the juicy stuff before the script chickens out on its provocative premise as a ferocious feminist fable. Adams plays “Mother,” that’s all she’s called as if her job defines her purpose in a an all-too-real version of shackled American motherhood.

A dreaded series of park visits, snack times, and playdates with other mothers who coo adoringly at their tots quickly start rubbing Mother’s last nerve. Mother has a Husband (Scoot McNairy) who’s usually out-of-town working and not much help when he is available with a son they call Baby (twins Arleigh Patrick and Emmett James Snowden spell each other in the role).

No wonder Mother starts breaking bad, slapping Husband hard in the face when he dares to tell her that “happiness is a choice.” This from a clueless dude who can’t even give BABY a bath without asking Mother for instructions every step of the way. The look Mother shoots him when he asks if she wants sex is a time-capsule worthy expression of “are you kidding me!”

Sound familiar, ladies? By the time Baby is two, Mother’s dual modes of expression have been reduced to exasperation and exhaustion. Tension escalates when Mother begins to manifest scary physical changes, such as growing fur and a tail and a nighttime urge to get down on all fours and run with the local dog pack to hunt animals and howl at the moon.

Up to this point, “Nightbitch” shows the potential to snap audiences into surreal visions of body horror and a redefinition of momhood as indentured servitude. Like the novel, the film uses magic realism to make its point about gaining a child and losing identity.

Cheers to Adams for delivering a fearless portrayal of a woman on the verge of imploding. After six acting Oscar nominations without a win, “Nightbitch” looked to be her ticket out of also-ran status. And that’s just when “Nightbitch” loses its nerve.

With no build-up, Mother embraces her life as a wife and parent as dweeb Husband becomes an improbable support system. What the actual hell is happening here? When did a fire-breathing, fem-centric Jekyll-and-Hyde allegory peter out into something Vice President-elect JD Vance could have written about a woman’s place in the home?

Heller has always been a director with a keen eye for visuals mixed with sharp dialogue—check out “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” or “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”—the caustic drama that won an Oscar nomination for Melissa McCarthy. Maybe the sweet residue of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” with Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers, sapped her usual resolve.

There’s no doubt that “Nightbitch” loses the courage of its fiercer convictions, a Heller decision that guts the tough core of the Adams performance and leaves the character and the movie drowning in a cotton candy quicksand that audiences never saw coming. Bummer.