Amy Adams is a frustrated, trapped, depressed, angry mother Night slut (Streaming now on Hulu). Oh, and as the title suggests, she turns into a dog, although I’m not sure if that’s literal or metaphorical because the film intentionally leaves that blurry. Writer/director Marielle Heller adapts Rachel Yoder’s 2021 novel from a trio of excellent films – Mr. Roger’s biography A beautiful day in the neighborhoodMelissa McCarthy’s underrated vehicle Can you ever forgive me? and thoughtful, provocative debut Diary of a teenage girl – with a self-described magical realist, dark satirical horror comedy that tempts you to say it has a little more belle than bite if you tend to force slightly inappropriate trite clichés into your critical commentary. But at least it doesn’t make us say WOOF.

NIGHTBITCH: STREAM OR SKIP?

The essentials: Night slut is the kind of over-the-top metaphor film in which the characters have no names and are therefore identified by an archetype. Adams plays mother, whose point of view dominates the film and therefore forces the other key people in her life to be defined as son (played alternately by twins Arleigh and Emmett Snowden) and husband (Scoot McNairy) rather than, say, boy or Papa. I’m annoyed by this hackneyed literary technique, so I’m going to refer to it by the actors’ last names. We meet Adams as she rolls her toddler Snowden through the supermarket. She runs into a former colleague who asks Adams what her new life as a stay-at-home mom is like, and Adams responds with a long tirade about being the frustrated, angry, trapped woman who gave up on her career, Be -a-suburban-mother version of America Ferrara’s speech in Barbie – but then the film stops just short of the record scratch fzwoop Sound as it pulls out the rug and reveals that she didn’t REALLY say any of that, but instead responded with shiny, happy platitudes of “Motherhood is a dream.” This is a lie that people say out loud and try to tell themselves, and it so rarely convinces anyone.

Next comes a sequence that illustrates Adams’ daily grind. It involves him repeatedly frying pre-made hash browns in a pan, chasing macaroni and cheese and wine, and sitting on the floor playing “Choo-Choo Trains” with the kid. We hear her inner monologue via voice-over, in which she explicitly spells out what we see on screen, which is a stumbling block in adaptations of novels so full of excellent words that you’ll want to cram them into films . One of these monologues tells us all about how Adams regrets letting her child sleep in bed with her because she’s afraid he won’t learn to fall asleep on his own, and how she’ll never be able to sleep properly, and how she would have listened to everything supposedly The experts who wrote books and now everything is ruined. And you somehow don’t mind telling, telling, telling all of this – instead of showing, showing, like movies should – because it’s so relatable. Motherhood is a precarious experience, damned if you do, damned if you don’t, and it’s so caught up in the crippling grip of depression.

Technically, Adams is not a single mother. Because McNairy travels a lot for work, he is often absent for days at a time. When he’s at home he seems like a decent, normal guy, but he shouldn’t complain so much about the lack of milk in the fridge or say stupid things like “Happiness is a choice” to his obviously mentally troubled wife When he’s home, she has to nudge him frequently to keep him up to his end of the parenting agreement. When he’s gone, she drags the boy, almost out of obligation, to the library, where he sings along cutely with Mom and me – they need something to do other than take part in the pre-made hash brown ritual – and she can barely stand it, beaming with the other one to be happy with mothers who she can never do anything with. Adams has nowhere to turn. She’s on an island with a small, demanding human who, as she says, she has “squeezed into the world… and will pee in your face without batting an eyelid.” She used to be an artist, the center of attention of gallery openings in New York City, and now she is something different, something completely unknown.

Speaking of which. This dog thing. Adams notices strange hairs on her. A few too many goatee hairs, a spot on her lower back that’s a little more aggressive than usual. She has a bump on her tailbone that sticks out like an ulcer and has clumps of pus oozing out of it. Is it growing? tail? Oh my God. Your sense of smell seems to be even more pronounced than when you were pregnant. Bright spot: She enjoys playing with the little Snowden “doggy”. They march to the supermarket buffet and, to the horror of everyone watching, stick their entire faces into plates full of meatloaf. She finally gets him to sleep alone – in a dog bed on the floor. They go to the park and she likes to attract dogs. At night she feels strange primal urges, and there is a moment when she digs in the garden on all fours. Dead animals appear on the doorstep and she doesn’t know it – or does she seem to remember? – how they got there. As for the family cat? I just say: oh-oh. Adams is changing. She vibrates. Check them out now!

What films will it remind you of?: Tully, Baby boom and, uh, Wolfen form an environment that is reminiscent of Night slut. (Note, Tully is terribly overlooked. Please stop missing something Tully!)

Performance worth seeing: Adams received a Golden Globe nomination for the role, but that’s not exactly a convincing endorsement. She pushes the boundaries of this rather strange material with a completely unimpressive, just-try-to-college performance, and you can sense that the film has no chance at all of being viable with anything less than a committed star.

Memorable dialogue: I’m not sure if Adams says this to McNairy in his mind or in reality: “Besides, I have eight nipples now and I’m afraid you’ll be repulsed.”

Gender and skin: A few non-nude sex scenes with Adams indulging in some dog sex scenes.

Our opinion: Strange film! Not strange enough, though. Heller’s David Cronenberg-via-mommy-blog approach Night slut leaves its central metaphor unexplained: Why exactly does Adams become a dog and not, I don’t know, a raccoon, a cobra, or a right whale? She’s feeling increasingly wild in her feed-sleep-play-training routine, but what exactly is driving her to dogdom? All wild animals are driven by primal instinct. Maybe it’s just easier to be a dog in the suburbs than, say, a wild and violent hippopotamus. Too big. Stands out too much in the park. Requires too much food to be plausible. Too expensive for a quasi-indie film budget. I couldn’t care less about the family cat.

But halfway through the movie I started thinking that maybe I was thinking about it too much and should just stick with it. In the end, it wasn’t exactly convincing either – it lacks the emotional shock to be effective horror or the gonzo ambition to be over-the-top funny. Beneath the surface you sense a fervent satire that never reaches its climax. Heller puts the premise gently, as if afraid of upsetting audiences who might turn their noses up at the thought of Amy Adams going into puppy dog ​​mode, and the result is a series of calculated left turns that the Narrative drifts towards the familiar “everything that’s going on.” be-OK/a-modern-woman-CAN-have-everything, Pablum.

That’s a disappointingly poor resolution for a film with a provocative title Night slutand that implies a certain level of thematic expansion, it doesn’t seem bold enough to entertain. It’s a collection of half-formed ideas – subplots about a trio of possibly like-minded playground moms, a librarian (played by the underused Jessica Harper) who seems to know more about bestial transformation than you’d expect, and Adams’ mysterious mother ( ( (which are shown in flashbacks) come tantalizingly close to the mark, but are just thematic dead ends. There’s so much potential here to sow discomfort and get big laughs, but the film seems to be self-conscious not being sure himself, too careful to go somewhere too interesting, lest it give up the theoretical, universal appeal of stories about frustrated mothers. This is a classic case of a film that doesn’t know what it’s doing just lean in, you’ll scream at the screen. But that never happens.

Our call: I wanted to like Night slut more than me. Adams is a game. The premise is ripe. Everyone loves dogs. But the film just doesn’t work. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.