As the TIFF 2024 lineup comes more into focus, few movies have as much buzz around them as Marielle Heller‘s “Nightbitch.” And there are many reasons for that, all covered in Vanity Fair’s first look at the movie. For one, it’s Heller’s first film in five years, since 2019’s “A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood.” It’s also an adaptation of Rachel Yoder‘s lauded 2021 novel, a magical realism-type story about a mom who gradually transforms into a dog. And Amy Adams stars in Heller’s adaptation, her first dramatic role in a couple of years. Heller, Adams, a movie premise that flirts with horror and comedy; what’s not to like?
That was Ms. Adams’ mentality when she first sat down to read Yoder’s novel well before it hit bookshelves three years ago. “It was so unique and otherworldly, and like nothing I’d ever read before,” said the actress on the book. It didn’t take long for Adams to sync up with Annapurna Pictures through her production banner to option the “Nightbitch” rights, with Yoder game for an adaptation. “It never crossed my mind,” the author said about a potential film based on her book. “It’s so internal. I think it’s a huge challenge.”
But that left one major question: who would adapt “Nightbitch” into a screenplay and direct? Enter Marielle Heller, about the perfect candidate Adams and Yoder could as for, and for a couple of reasons. Heller’s directorial approach would pair up excellently with the literary trappings of the novel. But it also helped that Heller was a mother of two, and with her hands full with a newborn, she’d have an intimate understanding of the main character’s struggles as a new mom and her all-consuming role as a nurturing parent. “When we thought about dream directors, Mari was our first choice,” Adams said of choosing a director. But would Heller be up to task of crafting a script in between her parental duties?
Heller called the process “a nightmare,” but she got it done. “I was writing it after being isolated in my house for a year,” she explained, starting work on the “Nightbitch” script after the COVID-19 pandemic. “And my husband” (director and Lonely Island member Jorma Taccone) “was on production, so I was alone with two kids for the first time. It was a nightmare. I was sleep-deprived.; I couldn’t see anybody or do anything. And my daughter was waking up at five in the morning every day.” Heller also had to occasionally plop her older child in front of the TV to give her time to write. “I felt super guilty,” she continued. “I would literally be midscene, and someone would start crying, and I’d have to stop.”
But the intensity and self-sacrifice of motherhood is what drew Adams and Heller to the “Nightbitch” project in the first place, although the film’s take on it is a bit more pecuiliar and messed up. As Mother, the film’s main character, struggles to meet her kids’ needs and accept that she’s leaving her art career behind, she starts dealing with strange physical changes. Fur appears on her back and butt, prompting one of her twins to tell her, “Mama fuzzy.” Then a bump start to grow at the base of her spine: the beginnings of a tail. Things only get more surreal from there. “One of the real challenges of “Nightbitch” is, what is the tone going to be? Is it going to be funny? Is it going to be dark? Is it going to be horror?” Yoder said of her novel. “This is a character who’s in emotional turmoil, but this is also an absurd situation.”
And as mothers, Adams and Heller know that absurdity all too well. “The thing I really attached to is this idea of loss of identity,” Adams said about Yoder’s book. Heller also related to Mother’s situation: “I have this memory of having food poisoning when my son was really little. I was throwing up, and he toddled in and started nursing on me while I was lying on the bathroom floor.” By that point, Heller was completely drained. “I had nothing left, she continued, “Just like, ‘My body is not my own anymore. This is so f*cked up. It felt like I was a bear and I had this cub, and the cub wasn’t supposed to go very far away from me. I needed to be connected physically to him at all times.”
That sense of maternal ferality is made jarringly literal in “Nightbitch,” which begs the question: Is Heller’s new movie a comedy or a horror film? The director thinks it’s both, or rather a comedy for women and more of a horror for men. Whatever the case, the film enmeshes the trappings of both genres: a sharp script; graphic body horror; physical comedy; grotesque transformations. But ultimately “Nightbitch” is a story of empowerment, with Mother’s metamorphosis in a dog making her a better mom. “Through her parenting—through her mothering—she got in touch with something bigger and something primal,” Adams said about her character. And capturing that big mutation was important for Heller, too. “With this, I’m like, ‘Becoming a parent is also a coming of age,'” the director said. “Your identity shifts in a really major way that not everybody talks about, especially as an artist—what you’re giving up, what you’re leaving behind.”
So are TIFF audiences ready for “Nightbitch”? Festival goers may be confused by the title, as some of Heller’s friends were. “Sometimes, when people ask me what the movie is about, I’m like, ‘It’s about motherhood and rage.’ And you either get that or you don’t,” joked the director. And Heller isn’t too worried if certain audience members, particular male ones, don’t get the movie; she wrote and made the film she wanted to, even if her husband thought things hit too close to home sometimes. “There were a few scenes where he read the pages and he was, like, ‘Okay, f*ck you. Don’t put that in.’” Heller kept those parts in, all to have “Nightbitch” better capture motherhood in all its messy glory.
Stay tuned for an official world premiere date for “Nightbitch” at TIFF as the summer continues. Check out first-look images for the film below.
