“Nightbitch 2024” explores a universal truism that being a mother is hard, sometimes in inspired ways, but mostly in a straightforward, mundane way. Marielle Heller’s film, based on Rachel Yoder’s acclaimed debut novel, threatens to be weird and dangerous, only to retreat into feel-good affirmation at the end. You can watch this movie on Theflixtor.
As writer-director, Heller too often skims the surface of complex emotions after the compelling honesty of previous works like Diary of a Teenage Girl and Can You Ever Forgive Me?
But Amy Adams seems up to the physical and emotional challenges of this darkly funny satire, in which she plays a mother we only know as a mother, who put her career as an artist on hold to raise her 2-year-old son, Son. (The end-of-life musical “The End,” also opening this week, also keeps its characters names.) (It’s a trick that’s more nasty than clever.) But he’s a very cute guy, played by blond-haired twins Arlie Patrick Snowden and Emmett James Snowden, both of whom seem unusually poised for their age.
But we get an early hint of her true state of mind in the film’s opening scene, when she meets a friend in a supermarket and is asked if she likes being a housewife and a mother. The mother launches into a vulgar, over-the-top rant about how tired and miserable she is. “I’m worried I’ll never be smart, happy, and thin again,” she admits. But the film turns out to be a fantasy series. Her real answer, “I love being a mother,” is harmlessly hung in the air. Night Bitch uses this bait-and-switch so often that it becomes predictable.
Working with editor Ann McCabe, Heller creates a rhythm that repeats the mother-son routine of cooking, eating, playing, cleaning, and finally, drinking a giant bottle of red wine in the afternoon. We all know the blur of monotony, the detachment from time. But the mother’s overbearing narration in these scenes often reveals what we can only see with our own eyes.
But sometimes the pair visit the library, and meet at the Book Babies’ dazed musical circle. That’s another way “Nightbitch 2024” really gets early motherhood right: the way you make friends with women you have nothing in common with, because your kids are the same age, and you participate in the same silly activities to get through your days. Mary Holland, Zoe Chao and Archana Rajan play these mothers, but there isn’t much for any of their characters to explore apart from their desire for adult conversation. Similarly, one might wish the legendary Jessica Harper had more of a role in her few scenes as a likeable librarian.
Read more reviews: https://medium.com/@theflixtormovies/nightbitch-2024-movie-review-cd8ef0fa12ca
https://hackmd.io/@Flixtor/Review-of-Nightbitch-2024-movie-By-Theflixtor
https://flixtormovieonline.hashnode.dev/review-nightbitch-2024-horror-movie
https://gotartwork.com/Blog/nightbitch-2024-horror-movie-review-by-theflixtor/292319
https://www.downpit.com/review-amy-adams-is-one-hell-of-a-mother-in-nightbitch
https://vocal.media/stories/nightbitch-2024-horror-movie-review