Motherhood and childbirth are often associated with gentleness and warmth. That’s because we see sanitized versions of these experiences in the popular media. These one-sided portrayals can alienate people who do not share those sentiments. They can make them feel guilty or ashamed for not being the beacon of kindness. A few recent projects have tried to break the stereotypes with chilling reality.
Shows like “Dead Ringers” and “This Is Going to Hurt” and movies like “The Lost Daughter” challenged these notions through their unfiltered perspective on these complicated experiences. “Nightbitch” (2024) is the latest addition to this list. Written and directed by Marielle Heller, it takes a black comedic approach to make a point about the pains of post-partum experience and motherhood. It stars Amy Adams as an unnamed mother, who starts feeling like she is turning into a dog.
Spoilers ahead.
Nightbitch (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
“Nightbitch” follows an unnamed woman who becomes a stay-at-home mother after the birth of her child. Her journey takes a surreal turn as she sees herself turning into a canine every night.
What happens in Amy Adams’ ‘Nightbitch’?
“Nightbitch” revolves around an unnamed woman (Amy Adams) living in Suburban America with her husband (Scoot McNairy) and their newborn child. Although set in a contemporary timeline, she lives almost like a 1950s stay-at-home wife. Every moment she is awake, she spends it taking care of her son. It doesn’t mean that she has no skills or talent otherwise. She is an artist, who left her work for the sake of her family. So, her identity remains to be that of just a mother while her husband goes out to work and has an active job. Considering these details, let’s call them Mother and Husband since they represent stereotypical judgments and behavioral patterns of both.
While Husband goes to work, Mother takes care of her child. One day, while in a supermarket, she bumps into her old friend, Sally (Adrienne Rose White). Unlike Mother, Sally has a life where she can apply her skills. However, Mother is stuck in her home with her child. So, she cannot tolerate people who consider motherhood to be a cakewalk. She wants to rant about the pressure of unreasonable expectations. Instead, she holds on to her rage and responds conventionally.
During these early months of parenthood, she also attends child-and-parent bonding sessions with some other moms. She notices other women being more gentle and accepting of their children’s embarrassments and finds that behavior unflattering. After the session, Jen (Zoë Chao), a mom approaches her and asks her about her artistic career. They speak about these careers as their past lives.
Mother’s Gradual Transformation
Mother is tired of taking care of her child. She has many sleepless nights and her husband isn’t of any help in this regard. He has to travel for his work and is often absent from his parenting duties. On top of that, he complains about the occasional pointlessness of his work and says he would rather prefer to be with his family. However, he barely takes any parenting responsibilities and knowingly or unknowingly, feels entitled to Mother’s attentiveness and generosity. So, Mother gets rightfully angry at him. He does not try to understand the reason behind her crankiness. Instead, he advises on how to maintain her composure.
He suggests scheduling her days without taking a child’s unpredictable behavior into account. Still, Mother reacts mildly than what her rage warrants her. As it happens, she starts noticing something different about her body. She notices some facial hair and sharp teeth. Later, she notices a bump on her lower back. She breaks that bump and a white liquid oozes out. Moments later, she finds a strand of hair inside that feels like a canine tail. She feels like she is turning into a dog. Around this time, her husband gets annoyed by her behavior and is on the verge of calling her the B-word. So, it indirectly reinforces her belief that she is turning into a female dog.
The Nightly Transformation
Mother tries to make sense of her transformation. At the grocery store, she realizes her hyper-awareness of smells. She recalls her mother’s behavior around the time she had a child. At a local library, Mother looks for references to learn more about this transformation. Librarian Laura (Jessica Harper) hands her a book that details similar past experiences. No matter what the Mother does, people around her make her feel alienated or embarrassed of herself. One day, she tries to have a moment in a food mall with her son, eating food like canines. While doing so, people around her stare at her, judgementally.
Eventually, one night, Mother submits to her seething rage at night and turns into a literal canine. She roams around the streets as a dog and hunts like a dog would. The dogs in her vicinity return to her house with their hunts and offer them as a sign of respect for her. Then, she inadvertently introduces a canine-like behavior at her home. It makes her feel liberated as she accepts her transformation without any shame that others expect her to feel.
At the Book Reading sessions, she openly talks about the manipulative nature of childcare industries that profit by making mothers feel guilty for not doing enough for their children. Unlike before, she is honest about her unpleasant feelings. It makes other moms feel comfortable sharing their post-partum experiences without any fear of judgment. Mother also makes her husband realize the necessity of this parenting approach.
Nightbitch (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
One evening, Mother takes a break from her parenting duties to be with her past friends. She joins them for dinner and listens to their elaborate stories about their work. They have oddly specific details to share about their passion. It alienates Mother since all she has been reduced to since the birth of her child is being a mother. She finds it hard to relate to her friends and vice versa. While they order fancy-sounding dishes, she eats kale salad. So, their waiter also makes her feel embarrassed of herself. As her friends keep ignoring her, she suddenly stands up from her seat. She starts barking and eats from someone’s else plate like a canine.
Mother returns to her house and contemplates what her life has become. At night, she joins other dogs for hunting and ends up killing her pet cat. The next morning, she notices the dead cat on the front porch and feels terrible about it. However, that night, her husband returns and questions why she did not ask him for help with this problem. She gets furious and finally opens up about her emotional struggles. She reveals that she does not want to be just a stay-at-home mom but to have her own artistic career. Husband feels she should have told him and is puzzled as to why she changed her mind about this decision.
What does Mother realize about her transformation?
The husband accuses Mother of not caring for him since childbirth and feels entitled to it. He reminds her of the curious, creative mind she once had without taking her painful sacrifice into account. So, after their heated argument, Mother tells her husband to live separately for a while to find an equitable way of parenting. Soon, Husband moves out into an apartment complex and shares parenting responsibilities with her. She returns to the library to return her book about human-to-canine transformations. Laura reveals that their library never had this book. However, she makes Mother feel at ease about her confusion, understanding it from her experience after childbirth.
Slowly, Mother returns to find the traces of her artistic life that she lost during and after her childbirth. Her husband, who has to deal with their son continuously for the first time, struggles to take care of him. He feels that their son looks at him like he is an alien and feels uncomfortable about it. Alas, his minor discomfort allows Mother time to work on her art and prepare for her exhibition. He notices the thought put into her artwork and feels guilty for robbing her of this joy. After that, the film’s final moments show Mother giving birth to another child with her husband standing right by her.
What does the metamorphosis in ‘Nightbitch’ really mean?
Amy Adams’s “Nightbitch” follows a woman who realizes that she is slowly turning into a dog shortly after she gives birth to a baby. The script works like an elaborate, extended metaphor of the painful post-partum experience where women are made to feel like the offensive slang for female dogs – for the physical and emotional changes the women go through during this period. Writer-director Marielle Heller gives it a black comedic spin with body horror elements by showing a literal transformation of a human to a canine.
Also, Read: Nightbitch (2024) Movie Review: Compelling Amy Adams Performance Is Overshadowed By Underdeveloped Black Comedy
Nightbitch (2024) Movie Trailer:
Nightbitch (2024) Movie Links: IMDb, Wikipedia, Rotten Tomatoes, Letterboxd
The Cast of Nightbitch (2024) Movie: Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Arleigh Snowden, Emmett Snowden, Zoë Chao, Mary Holland, Ella Thomas, Archana Rajan, Jessica Harper
Nightbitch (2024) Movie Genre: | Runtime:
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