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“Nightbitch” Squandered a Good Premise

Lazy storytelling made it hard to watch

Patsy Fergusson
Fourth Wave
6 min readJan 15, 2025

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Amy Adams in Nighbitch promo poster from Searchlight Pictures

Warning: spoilers ahead.

I loved the premise of Nightbitch: a woman bored with staying at home with her toddler turns into a dog at night and runs feral through the streets. Great idea! And Amy Adams is a talented actor who could pull off the transformation. But the script broke the first rule of storytelling — show, don’t tell — which made the movie excruciating to watch.

That supermarket scene

I viewed the first 15 minutes with two men, both of whom were eager to turn it off and watch something else — and I had to agree. To be honest, I felt embarrassed watching Nightbitch with them. The storytelling was so poor — the main character so lame, impotent, and unsympathetic — that it seemed a testament to the insignificance of women’s lives.

The movie opens with Mother performing a lot of repetitive tasks: frying up frozen potato patties for breakfast, pushing Baby on a swing, waving goodbye as Husband drives away to embark on multi-day business trips. At this point, I’m already pissed that Mother’s so obviously unhappy because the setting is so luxurious.

She lives in a huge house in a beautiful suburb with wide streets flanked by tall, leafy trees. I’m not saying that rich…

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Patsy Fergusson
Patsy Fergusson

Written by Patsy Fergusson

Tree hugger. Tour guide. Top Writer. Feminist. Newly-baptized Bay swimmer. Editor of Fourth Wave. https://medium.com/fourth-wave

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