I have mixed feelings on “the book was better” discourse when it comes to feature adaptations. On the one hand, it is obviously fair to compare a movie with its source material, but it’s never a totally fair comparison. Not only do films have restricted creative real estate to work with in the form of runtime (which necessitates alterations and deviations by screenwriters), but there’s something that feels weird about judging the images you conjured in your head as a reader next to a filmmaker’s vision. Prose and cinema are different mediums, and expecting something to wholly align with your own imagination is unrealistic.
Nightbitch is a unusual instance, however, in that the film doesn’t only cut out sequences and minimize certain elements; it has a different mood. With its body metamorphosis, animal violence, and intense rage, Rachel Yoder’s novel is a bloody horror satire, but what writer/director Marielle Heller has made with her adaptation is better described as a fantasy-touched dramedy. It’s a genre shift that really throttled me during my screening of the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival, and it’s really difficult to put aside as I reflect on it – while still having a great deal of appreciation for its brutally honest commentary on motherhood, its characters, and yet another excellent turn from the always-reliable Amy Adams. (And for what it’s worth up front, it’s much better than the trailer that was released pre-premiere).
Adams plays the unnamed Mother, an artist who has quit her career to become a stay-at-home home mom caring for her two-year-old son (Arleigh Patrick Snowden and Emmett James Snowden) while her Husband (Scoot McNairy) spends most of the week out of town for work. The monotony of her life and lack of sleep and creative impulse wears at her soul and her relationships, but far more alarming is that between a tuft of hair growing on her back, her sharpening teeth, and heightened senses, she begins to consider that she might be growing into a dog.
Like Nightbitch‘s protagonist in her most canine form, Rachel Yoder’s novel has sharp teeth; Marielle Heller’s movie does not. The source material is funny, but the adaptation puts more of an emphasis on the comedy, and it is to the detriment of the story. It’s lightly disturbing in the book when Mother starts digging into her plate snout-first at a restaurant with her child, has her son start sleeping in a dog crate, and feeds him raw meat. In the movie, the restaurant scene is played for laughs, the dog crate is replaced by a doggy bed, and the raw meat is cut out entirely. (There are other examples as well, but they start veering into spoiler territory.)
This isn’t to say that Nightbitch isn’t totally stripped of its original genre elements, as there is a nice bit of body horror when Mother discovers a swelling lump at the base of her spine and decides to prick it with a needle, and many a small animal meets a grisly demise. But those limited tastes actually make the tone change more frustrating along with the surprising cautiousness in the depictions of sex and violence.
All of the intensity of the transformation is removed in the film, and it lessens the impact of the larger message, but it isn’t totally eliminated, and that is essential with this story. To the credit of Marielle Heller and Amy Adams, one of the big challenges in adapting Nightbitch is translating the predominance of Mother’s rage-filled inner voice, and that’s accomplished without heavily leaning on the common crutch that is voice-over narration. The film makes fun use of the “What I Wanted To Say/What I Actually Said” gag, and Adams simply does a fantastic job delivering the seething anger and exhaustion that gives way to passion and refreshed joy when she embraces her inner animal.
I’ve wondered if the release of Nightbitch was missing out on a spooky season opportunity by happening in December instead of September/October, but that choice makes a lot more sense now. The film may play differently with altered expectations (which I say in advanced of my own potential second viewing and for those of you who are reading this feature before your own screening), but for now, it’s simply not the movie I was hoping it would be.