Y’know, with a title like Nightbitch, I was expecting something a lot more hardcore. And, yeah, I knew the basic premise so I also expected themes of motherhood and depression. Instead I got a movie that was shouting those brilliant themes… and dogs.

Nightbitch stars Amy Adams as a mother running out of steam with a husband barely there and barely there even when he IS there. She loves her family but doesn’t love what’s become of her body, her mind, and her career. And then, something something wild animal analogy.

Also… something something “show don’t tell”. This movie has so little confidence in its own message and its own audience that it shouts what its about from the rooftops. I mean, we can tell the themes from the acting and the imagery… it doesn’t have to explain point by point that Amy Adams is at wit’s end. We can see it.

It’s like the movie started with a title – Nightbitch – to describe how Adams feels in the evening dealing with a lazy husband and cranky child…. and then they took it to a half-assed extreme. Somehow her feeling exhausted and disrespected tangled up into a dog-based vaguely defined werewolf-adjacent story. And I’m confused about the half-baked analogy.

It’s as if they didn’t think anyone would go to see the Amy Adams is Sad Movie so they mixed in some very hand-waving animal transformations and body horror but lost place on what the metaphor even is. Moms are like wild animals? Moms should embrace their wild inside? Moms should listed to more Weird Al?

But the core of the film and Amy Adams acting the hell out of it saves the movie, even if I kept frowning as to what the point of all the hand-waving supernatural stuff was about. The core message of a career-minded woman feeling crushed under the weight of her daily life is very well done (when not being over-explained).

It’s a pretty good film under the overcoat of a half-formed idea. I wish I liked it more and, to the extent I do like it, I place it all at the feet of Amy Adams. The script needed reworked and its title replaced.

Score: 78