2024 Chicago International Film Festival Movie Review: Nightbitch

Amy Adams gives one of the best performances of 2024 in Nightbitch, Marielle Heller’s uneven horror dramedy about the superpowers and stress of being a wife and mother.

Adams stars Mother, a once-promising artist who puts her career on hold after she gets pregnant and becomes a stay-at-home wife and mother. Her husband (Scoot McNairy) has a job that sees him traveling throughout the week and only being home on the weekends. The stress of taking care of their son, keeping the house together, being a wife, and accepting that she may never be an artist again starts to get too much for Mother and her world begins to take a surreal turn.

Nightbitch, which is in the running for the best movie title of 2024, works best as a domestic dramedy and less when focused on the surreal, body-horror element the movie mixes in. Moments like Mother trying not to lose her mind at a local library as a man with a guitar sings songs to other mothers and kids or small arguments she has with her clueless husband about running out of milk or putting their son down to bed are interesting to watch. They’re funny, biting, uncomfortable, and realistic, and every person in a relationship will relate to them in some way.

The surreal element of the film is bold but never fully clicked for me. Nightbitch either needed to lean harder into the surrealness or tone it back a little more. It felt like Heller couldn’t decide which avenue she wanted to take between a domestic dramedy or a weird body-horror movie and didn’t put the full effort into this element of the film.

Much like Mother must do everything to keep her family and home together, Amy Adams keeps Nightbitch together even when the plot and symbolism get shaky. Adams gives a committed and excellent performance as the overworked and over-stressed Mother. From scene one, Adams lets you know exactly who Mother is and she guides us on this wild journey of self-worth and realizing what is best for her life. It’s Adams’ best performance in years.

While the surrealist element of the film doesn’t fully work, It’s Heller’s direction during the domestic scenes and the performance of Amy Adams that makes Nightbitch worthy of watching. It’s a cautionary tale to all significant others to listen to their partners and a love note to all the hardworking mothers out there who are trying to keep it together even when life seems to be slipping by.

Nightbitch played as the Centerpiece at the 2024 Chicago International Film Festival.

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