‘A comedy for women and a horror for men’ – why Nightbitch serves as a breath of relief for mothers

As a woman who has not yet “evolved” into motherhood, Nightbitch encompasses every fear I have about reaching the next phase in life.

It is a given that motherhood is a gift and anyone who is lucky enough to become a parent is greeted with the chance of coming face to face with an indescribable level of love – but that doesn’t mean the transition itself is by any means an easy journey.

The unspoken truth of grieving your previous self when you become a mother tends to be a taboo subject in society. Nightbitch looks to break that taboo.

The film stars Amy Adams as a mother of a two-and-a-half-year-old who has chosen to walk away from her career as an artist to stay at home with her child.

Afraid to be deemed “ungrateful” by opening up about the struggles of being a new mother, the film showcases the beauty of unconditional maternal love combined with the feelings of isolation and being cast away into a monotonous parental prison, void of stimulating conversation, creative freedom and self-confidence.

Based on the Rachel Yoder novel of the same name, it uses magic realism to explore the naturalistic impulses, excess hair and hormones gained from motherhood – akin to becoming a dog.

“A little inside scoop, that is my actual chin hair,” jokingly boasts Amy Adams in our conversation about the film.

“I told Marielle [director] I can grow all of that for you. [The character] was someone who was sprouting hair, so I was like: “Let’s do this!”

“I mean, we’re humans and really what is perfection? It’s a sort of societal norm that’s decided on, right?”

The six-time Oscar nominee says reading the book and the film’s script gave her the space to accept her own feelings that arose when she first became a mother.

“I went through a couple of phases. I went back to work really quickly, and I think it was very hard to find that balance.

“I felt really guilty for working and a lot of shame for being away from her and I think it took a little bit for me to sort of understand that.”

She says finding the balance between her demanding career and her constant desire to be with her child became “the most important thing” and says it took a while to figure out her priorities.

“When you’re trying to please everybody, you’re pleasing nobody, and I think that’s what I had to get out of doing and begin recognising that sometimes people are going to be unsatisfied with me and that was okay”.

The Enchanted actress says her goal is that Nightbitch creates an “open space” for women to openly voice their feelings.

“I hope that when people see this film, they really feel like they can start to have those conversations because I’ve been getting a lot of responses from people where they’re [finding it] very personal and they feel like they’re getting something off their chest and that makes me really happy”.

Scoot McNairy plays “husband” in the comedy-horror who continues working in a job that keeps him away from home, days at a time.

He’s not a villain in the story, but simply a man who lives blissfully unaware that his wife’s life is no longer her own and now revolves around the child they brought into the world.

Director Marielle Heller says she took inspiration from her own husband of 25 years and their relationship as they became parents.

“It was really important to me that he was not villainised, that we had a character who was very complete – and that you don’t feel like this is a marriage that’s doomed.

She says she wanted to show that mothers are not just raising the next generation but are coping with the transformation of their mind, body and spirit all at once from the person they were before parenthood.

“It’s a major identity shift. For me, I felt so completely changed on a cellular level. I didn’t recognise myself when I looked in the mirror or my marriage when my partner and I looked at each other.”

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Adams adds: “It’s a very confusing feeling when you are a really logical person, and you become a parent, and you didn’t expect to feel certain things.

“I didn’t know that I was going to feel so set on having my kid, my first child, sleep in the same room with me, for example. But it felt like this, like I’m a bear. He needs to be in my cave. Something’s going to eat him if he’s far away. Like there is just some deep instinct that kicked in that felt like it was a survivalist instinct of like, I can’t let something hurt my baby.”

After watching Nightbitch at a press screening, the reaction afterwards exemplified the reason for this film’s existence.

Mothers and women were tear-filled, both from laughter and from their emotions being validated on screen. While men left dazed, confused and horrified, particularly due to seeing realistic menstrual blood on a large screen. One of whom perfectly summed up his experience with one sentence: “I don’t get it.”

Nightbitch is in cinemas now.