Nightbitch: Amy Adams satire is 'less wild' than it sounds

"'Nightbitch' stars Amy Adams as a mother who is so full of rage about her loss of identity" that she becomes feral and starts turning into a dog, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator.

There's nothing I can say to make the film sound less weird than it is – "she grows a tail! extra nipples!" – but actually, other than the dog stuff, it's a "less wild" story than it sounds.

'Heavy-handed' in parts

Adams's character – who is only ever referred to as "Mother" – hasn't worked since she had a son two years ago. Her husband (Scoot McNairy) isn't a monster, but he doesn't help much and seems somewhat detached.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The film is "heavy-handed" in parts, and it hasn't much to say about motherhood and society that we haven't heard before, but Adams is "wonderfully watchable throughout, and I wasn't ever bored". In fact, "I'm going to stick my neck out and say it": this may be the "best film about a woman turning into a dog that you'll see this year".

Pretty 'silly'

The performances in this "fantasy-satire" are decent enough, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian, and the "straightforward, realistic, non-dog" scenes are excellent on how "stressful and terrifying unsupported parenthood can be". But I must say I found the dog bits pretty "silly". The mother develops a "freaky look in the eye", a hunger for meat and a need to gallop around, killing things. It's neither "properly scary" to watch her do this, nor "properly funny".

Adams is admirably "un-vain" throughout, at one point scampering about on all fours, said Nick Curtis in The London Standard. Yet for a film that's "all about the loss of identity", there's no real sense of the person her character was before motherhood, and all the other characters are just "flat stereotypes".