Stop me if you have heard this one before: In her latest movie, the brilliant Amy Adams plays a new mom who is overwhelmed by her son’s inconsistent sleep schedule, his fussy appetite, and the droning repetition of the day-to-day schedule that includes play dates, kid music, and messes. But at night, “Mother” (Adams) believes that she’s turning into a dog. OK, wait… I was with you until that part. But that’s the plot of NIghtbitch, an adaptation of a 2021 novel written by Rachel Yoder that burrows into the primal feelings of motherhood, and features a blistering performance by the always reliable Adams. When is Adams not good? It’s very rare. In fact, there’s a scene in Nightbitch that maybe was too convincing, as it forced several crew members to leave the set while director Marielle Heller filmed it.
This isn’t a spoiler. In fact, it might make you more curious for the lengths that Marielle Heller and Amy Adams went to create the atmosphere on Nightbitch. Throughout the movie, when the evening approaches, the overwhelmed “Mother” (Adams) begins to give into some animalistic urges. We’re never 100% sure if they are real or imagined. And in one, Mother thinks that she sees a growth on her lower back. It starts as a boil. But as she digs at it, it bursts open, and a dog’s tail emerges. It’s beyond gross.
So during a Nightbitch press day, I had to ask Heller and Adams about the creation of the prop. And Heller informed CinemaBlend that she viewed this as the “biggest, most disgusting, groany scene of the movie,” elaborating:
The creation of that was very complicated. We made a prosthetic version of her body, and it was puppeted and operated with hand doubles and people underneath who were squirting out puss and feeding hair in through it. I found this whole process hilarious! But there were some people on set who were so disgusted that they actually couldn’t be in the room while we filmed it.
Rarely do you hear the words “puss” and “hair” and think that good things are on the way. However, as Heller goes on to say, people who read the novel will be expecting this level of dark, macabre humor in the movie. And Adams is always game for whatever. And yet, in an exclusive interview with CinemaBlend, even Adams claimed:
Luckily, I was not there! I was there for part of it, when we first see the bump. But a lot of it, the actual… I’m just really glad I wasn’t there for that particular (scene). I didn’t see it until I screened the movie! … The first time I saw it, I was like, ‘Oh! OK! We’re doing it. OK, that’s where we’re going. I like it.’ Of course, I knew it was coming. But I was very impressed.
It’s something to behold. As is Amy Adams in Nightbitch. Honestly, I think that she is one of our strongest working actors, and tends to be underrated in movies like this. Nightbitch is a fascinating book-to-screen adaptation, one of many that need to be on your radar as the holiday season rolls along. Just, avoid this and The Substance if body horror makes you squeamish, as neither of them hold back in that department.
