Nightbitch

Year 17, Day 245 - 9/2/25 - Movie #5,129

BEFORE: Time to play "Is it a horror film or is it NOT a horror film?" The only way to know, of course, is to watch it. If it WERE a horror film, then it should be watched in October, however exceptions have been made in the past, especially if I need something to be somewhere else for linking purposes. Regardless of its status, this currently links to only ONE horror film on my list, so the chances of me getting to this one in October 2025 or even October 2026 are therefore quite slim. But I've got the chance to program it here, I should probably take it. More horror-based films are on the way, 25 of them starting on October 1. That was the biggest chain I could possibly assemble from the films on my list, and it works out great because we were planning to go away for a week, so 31 would probably be too many, as it is I may struggle fitting 25 films into 23 days, but I'll make it work somehow. 

Kerry O'Malley carries over from "The Six Triple Eight". I'm kind of stranding "Bones and All" by watching this tonight, because I can't fit that one in, I've got to go in a different direction. 

THE PLOT: A woman pauses her career to be a stay-at-home mom, but soon her domesticity takes a surreal turn. 

AFTER: No, I really can't tell if I'm supposed to take this film seriously or if it's just an allegory of some kind. Where does reality stop and fantasy or dream sequences begin? It's a bit tough to tell. Am I over-thinking things? I feel like I'm probably over-thinking things. I should learn to just relax and let things happen because, you know, it's only a movie and sometimes weird or inexplicable things happen in a movie. 

The main character is only known in the credits as "Mother", so if she has a name, it's apparently not that important. Her son is just called "Baby", and she calls him that in the film, so either the screenwriter was too lazy to give characters names or they really wanted to lean in to the allegorical nature of things. Without a proper name "Mother" represents all mothers, and "Baby" represents all children. OK, still not sure where exactly that gets us. Aronofsky had a film a few years ago called "Mother!" and the whole thing was a damn allegory where the Mother represented.. hell, I'm not going to spoil that here, see the damn film for yourself. 

But if we are meant to take this film literally, yes, this is that film about a woman who might just be turning into a dog at night. She's growing hair in weird places, and there's a bump that might just want to turn into a tail. Plus she's growing extra nipples, which, sure, the more the merrier I guess but also like kind of ewwww.....  So while this isn't a horror film outright, like it's NOT a werewolf film, but IMDB puts it in the "body horror" genre. I had to make a judgement call here, like is this a horror film or is this NOT a horror film? Since I needed the film here in September to make the linking possible, so I can GET to October in the first place, I'm going to lean towards this NOT being a horror film, not in the strictest sense, but still, it's bizarre. 

Or maybe you prefer to NOT take this literally. Again, maybe she's having stress dreams, perhaps she's just remembering incidents from her childhood where she imagined that her mother turned into a dog and ran through the woods at night. She's recently quit chasing the dream of juggling motherhood with her art career, which meant becoming a stay-at-home mom, and maybe she's just not adjusting to the change well. Plus her husband travels a lot for his job, so her day is just filled with Baby's schedule, Baby's play time and Baby's nap time and Baby's bath time. Repeat as necessary until Baby goes to school, yeah I can see how that could drive somebody off the deep end. Then when her husband IS at home, he's not much help taking care of Baby, so that's bound to put a strain on the relationship as well as her mental well-being. 

Really, it's up to you - you can decide whether Mother is really turning into a dog, or whether it's all a fantasy or stress dream. Really you have that power with every film, just here it's so very very prominent that YOU need to make a choice. Suspend your disbelief or don't, I can really say that in every review - if you're not buying it, you're not buying it - you can always just say, "Well, every movie is just a movie, such stuff as the filmmaker's dreams are made of."

We do hear about some kids now who "identify" as cats or dogs, I guess there are parents out there who think little Liam is adorable and creative when he pretends to be an animal and they don't want to crush his dreams or stifle that creativity, so they just roll with it. Then on the other side of the political aisle we've got people who are HORRIFIED that kids are coming to school in cat mode and they want to poop in a litter box and eat their food off the floor, and why can't parents discipline their kids any more and why does the school allow this to continue, when I suspect these people are really just blowing things out of proportion and hate any part of culture that they don't fully understand. According to Wikipedia, it's really all a big hoax, and conservative politicians started it in response to school districts who created protections for transgender students, as if to say, "Well, if you let THAT happen, next thing you know, we'll be telling kids they can be cats or dogs..." which only means that those people don't understand the original issue AT ALL.

But hey, maybe this is where that all starts, if it exists at all. Mommy gives up her career, Mommy has stress dreams after taking care of Baby all day every day, and Mommy invents pretending to be a dog because it gets Baby to eat his food and Baby to not sleep in Mommy's bed any more, and also, hey, it's kind of fun to have this creative play time. I get it, sure, but then don't blame me when your kid grows up to be a furry. Also, I think for years feminists were trying to get the message out to women that they COULD have it all, a career and a relationship and a child without being a bitch, and now I think this film feels like we're backsliding a bit? Like breaking up with your husband is one way to show him how hard you've been working to take care of your child, but is it really the BEST way to accomplish that? Maybe, I don't, know, try having a conversation about that instead of going straight to DefCon 1? 

Directed by Marielle Heller (director of "The Diary of a Teenage Girl" and "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood")

Also starring Amy Adams (last seen in "Disenchanted"), Scoot McNairy (last seen in "Luckiest Girl Alive"), Arleigh Snowden, Emmett Snowden, Jessica Harper (last seen in "Suspiria"), Zoe Chao (last seen in "Long Weekend"), Mary Holland (last seen in "Self Reliance"), Archana Rajan, Nate Heller (last seen in "The Diary of a Teenage Girl"), Darius De La Cruz, Ella Thomas (last seen in "Surrogates"), Stacey L. Swift (last seen in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"), Adrienne Rose White, Michaela Baham, Roslyn Gentle, Michael Andrew Baker (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Judith Moreland (last seen in "Dark Skies")

RATING: 5 out of 10 fried hash brown patties (I've been putting them STRAIGHT onto egg salad and spam sandwiches, DELISH)