Nightbitch (2024)

Before I settled into my local arthouse cinema to watch the marvellous Amy Adams in Nightbitch, I had read a few reviews.

Christy Lemire on Rogerebert.com thought it “occasionally inspired, but mostly blunt and banal.”

Clarise Loughry in the Independent wrote that for a film called “Nightbitch” – “it seems fair to ask for a little wildness, a little bite. Nightbitch is as tame can be.” She argues there is too much thinking and talking.

Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian praises Adams performance but declares that none of it is “properly scary”, that it shrinks away from the “transgressive extreme.”

And several other reviews let me know that this wasn’t going to be the body horror of The Substance.

So, I entered the cinema waiting to be mildly disappointed. But here's the good news. I wasn't.

In academia there is a phenomenon known as Reviewer 2. There is even a Facebook group called “Reviewer 2 must be stopped.”

All academic journal articles are subject to anonymous peer review to ensure the research stands up to scrutiny and the knowledge generated provides a contribution to the field. But sometimes the peer review system falls into the trap of a reviewer being unhappy that you haven’t written the article they would’ve done. It leads to snarky, snide, damning with faint praise reviews that niggle over the placement of semi-colons and suggest references which might just give away their anonymity.

And this could be what happened with the reviews of Nightbitch. Underneath the surface of the two or three star review was a sense that this wasn’t the film that they would have made. It wasn’t the film that they wanted to watch. They wanted a grotesque body shock horror that made particular critiques of modern gender relations.

So, here’s what I think the film got right (besides the casting of Amy Adams).

It depicted, with a selection of looped and montage shots, the repetitive nature of early motherhood. It got the sense of the drudge. The dislocation between body and mind. The sense that the body is no longer your own and you don’t recognise yourself. The sense that you have done something amazing, incredible, god-like and yet you are invisible and get discounted. The lack of connection with some old friends. The sense that you have to make new mother friends which can seem both overwhelming and thuddingly dull. The fear that you are not going to be enough. The lack of sexual connection between your body and your partner. The disconnect between you and your partner, when trying to explain the complexity of it all. How support dwindles because people are afraid to challenge your decisions. Any brief respite being interrupted by more demands.

But it also got right that the love for the child is never in doubt. The fear that overtakes when you can’t find them in a park. The giggles and joy and the gains are as real as the boredom and loss. And that libraries really matter.

My own Reviewer 2 moment came when I realised that the Mother in Nightbitch had had a job she loved. I didn’t have that. Work was never going to be my escape back into myself. In fact it became another source of thankless demands. I wasn’t being Mother Rachel, but Worker Rachel was not who I wanted to be either. The space between work and home was the most comfortable to me. The alone time in the car. The walk to the office. The respite all too brief.

But this was just a Reviewer 2 moment, rather than a scathing criticism of a film that was funny and inventive, and tested the courage of Adams as she got on all fours and scratched at the dirt. It was a moment of acknowledgement that there was a difference between my story and the one she was telling. And if I want to see my story on screen, I have to write it.

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