Amy Adams Stars In Transforming Horror Comedy
It is anyone’s guess how Nightbitch will do in theaters when it’s released this coming December. So far, it has received mostly positive reviews from critics after its premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. What may be the most entertaining part of the film is watching Amy Adams transform yet again. What may be the most interesting is what that term might mean to different viewers.
We have watched Amy Adams transform herself many times on film, so Nightbitch is nothing new for her. Perhaps it is just the latest on her journey through strengthening her screen skills. This film, marketed as a horror comedy, has been adapted from the novel of the same name by debut writer Rachel Yoder.
Indeed, the film rights were acquired before the book had even been published. The premise of the story is that of an artist who decides to become a stay-at-home mom to her two-year-old and slowly starts finding herself transforming into a canine.
We have watched Amy Adams transform herself many times on film, so Nightbitch is nothing new for her.
Amy Adams will play Mother/Nightbitch in this film. If you’ve followed her trajectory as an actress, her transformation has been nothing short of amazing. She went from perfect pretty princess in Enchanted, the darling socialite in Leap Year, and the sweet writer in Julia & Julia to the sleazy girlfriend in The Fighter, the weirdo peeping lady in The Woman in the Window, the self-abusing journalist in Sharp Objects, and the hideous drug addict mother in Hillbilly Elegy. In short, this woman can do anything.
Amy Adams will surely be magnificent in Nightbitch, but it isn’t because she’s so great at the actual transformation. It’s because she’s so good at making you feel what she’s feeling. The story, at its heart, is about the trials and frustrations mothers go through when they’re locked in their houses with their children all day, responsible for caring for them, raising them, guiding them, and teaching them. Mothers get lost, they get left behind by society, and before they know it, they become invisible.
Amy Adams will surely be magnificent in Nightbitch, but it isn’t because she’s so great at the actual transformation.
Amy Adams will, ideally, show us an alternative to this invisibility in Nightbitch. Instead of disappearing into the lives of her loved ones, she’ll transform into something vicious, hungry, angry, and unstoppable. Yoder has said that she hadn’t written for two years before she sat down to write her book. And she wrote it as a response to the anger she felt at new motherhood.
We can celebrate Amy Adams in her role in Nightbitch, and we can try to find the canine within us all — we can allow ourselves righteous anger, hunger, and ferocity.
As with most movies and books by women being honest about womanhood, critics don’t know what to do with it. Some love the book, and some hate it. And the same goes for the movie so far.
But mothers know what to do. We can celebrate Amy Adams in her role in Nightbitch, and we can try to find the canine within us all — we can allow ourselves righteous anger, hunger, and ferocity.
The world is cruel to new mothers, especially to stay-at-home moms. Here’s to more books and movies that reveal that truth in whatever magical surrealist ways they want to, much like the horror film The Babadook does.
The film is hitting theaters on December 6, 2024.
