There are few concepts simultaneously as comforting and disturbing as placid suburbia – the irresistible push-and-pull of a life defined by white picket fences and perfectly maintained lawns contrasted with the underlying knowledge that not everything is quite as it seems beneath the surface. David Lynch perhaps said it best when he stated “I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath”, which is one of the most simple but evocative images of the broken promises of the Normal Rockwell-esque image of the ideal American family. In her fascinating novel Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder examines what it means to be a woman crushed under the weight of a social system designed to keep her docile, and how she gradually liberates herself from these responsibilities – by turning into a dog that prowls the neighbourhood under the cover of night, frantically embracing the freedom she lacks in her day-to-day routine. A challenging text but one that was nonetheless provocative enough to stir interest, it seemed like it would inevitably find its way into the realm of adaptations. In this case, it was handled by Marielle Heller, who has proven herself to be an essential voice in contemporary independent cinema, each one of her previous three films being well-received and celebrated for their unique reasons. However, this was maybe her biggest challenge yet, considering the story required Heller to work on many different levels in terms of tone and structure, as well as developing characters that required much more work than we’d anticipated. A bold experiment that is both unnerving and outrageously funny, Nightbitch looks at universal themes through a warped lens that only highlights the extraordinary madness that fuels the social system, and which Yoder and Heller use as the focus of their callous but brilliant interrogation of the status quo and everything that it represents.

The most effective kind of satire is the one that doesn’t intend to make its themes too difficult for the viewer to understand but also doesn’t deliver it in an entirely obvious manner, leaving some surprises for the audience to unearth in the process. Nightbitch is a peculiar film for several reasons, but chief among them is its careful attention to detail about the ideas that inspired the story. Yoder wrote the novel as an exploration of motherhood, taken from the perspective of a housewife who slowly spirals into a state of madness while trying to raise her son almost entirely by herself, as her husband has a job that forces him to travel for most of the week, leaving his wife to do all the work of caring for their child. The unnamed protagonist (all the characters remain nameless, a fascinating decision that Heller retains for the adaptation, giving it a sense of universality)  is someone undergoing a journey that will resonate with many viewers, who will likely recognize what she is enduring, much of which is drawn from the author’s own experiences as a mother, which ultimately inspired her to write the novel. Heller was working with a rare text that is specific insofar as it is a personal manifesto written by an author focused on filtering her frustrations into a more cohesive work, while also being extremely universal. Motherhood is a difficult theme to explore since it is something that many experiences, but which is different for everyone, presented the film with the challenge of trying to find common ground on which those who have been through motherhood will find familiarity, and those of us outside that world can still understand the experience, at least to a small extent. The result is an extremely unorthodox film, yet still a wonderfully complex investigation into the brutality of motherhood and the changes that can occur during this period, both physically and mentally, that can feel akin to transforming into an entirely different species altogether.

The unnamed mother in Nightbitch is a challenging role and one that requires someone willing to create their bespoke interpretation of the character. The role as it is written can only be considered a surrogate for Yoder, which propelled Heller to expand the character to be tailored to the actor enlisted to play the part – and from the start of its inception as a film, Amy Adams was attached to the role, which is one of the most daring and unconventional she has played in many years. Adams has spent the past few years doing relatively subdued work that doesn’t show the true scope of her skills, and this film presents her with the most interesting part since perhaps Arrival, which remains one of her best performances. This role is quite internal and could not be reduced to a few quirks, but rather needed to be a fully-formed, multidimensional individual, created in close collaboration between the director and her lead. I’m always reluctant to refer to actors pushing the boundaries of their craft as “brave”, since part of their responsibility as performers are to challenge themselves (and those who refuse tend to be quite one-note and uninteresting), but in the same way that Yoder writes on her own experiences, Adams draws from her maternal journey, delivering a performance that only someone who implicitly understands the trials and tribulations of motherhood could have accomplished, containing layers of detail that cannot be understated in terms of their relevance to the underlying themes. She’s supported by a strong ensemble, with Scott McNairy being an excellent scene-partner as her lacklustre husband, and twin child actors Arleigh and Emmett Snowden sharing the part of the nameless child central to the narrative, and horror legend Jessica Harper has a small but substantial supporting role as a vaguely mysterious librarian who acts as a spiritual guide to the protagonist. Everyone orbits around Adams and her exceptional performance, which is a layered, complex depiction of a woman gradually spiralling out of control as she assesses her choices and wonders whether there is any way of emancipating herself from this existential ennui while not sacrificing her sanity or her cherished position as a mother.

In taking on Yoder’s notoriously offbeat novel, Heller is forced to move away from the more pleasant, comforting tones of Can You Ever Forgive Me? And A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, and instead returns to the thornier and more unhinged nature of her debut, Diary of a Teenage Girl, which was a similarly unconventional glimpse into femininity from the perspective of a complex protagonist growing into her identity. Adams delivers a fantastic performance, but a film like Nightbitch is going to require more than just using its lead and her commitment to the part as a crutch. Yoder’s original novel is an intricately woven character-driven narrative told from a first-person perspective, which immediately makes it difficult to adapt to the screen, which isn’t even getting into the tonal shifts. The only way to successfully adapt these ideas is through employing dense layers of surrealism, introducing them to the narrative from the very start. Heller’s skill as both a writer and director is extremely clear in this film, since she compiles a set of incredible monologues that push the story forward and give it direction, particularly since they become increasingly more unhinged and provocative as the story progresses, leaning into the outward absurdity that propels the narrative. Classifying Nightbitch into a particular genre is almost impossible since its layers of humour are sharply contrasted by a sense of uncomfortable sadness and apoplectic rage, neither of which are traditionally considered fodder for comedy, but which still contribute to the overall sense of lighthearted awkwardness that eventually evolves into a kind of psychological horror as we watch the protagonist slip further into a state of delusion, which she does with a smile that slowly transforms into a grimace, and then eventually a rabid snarl in a moment of incredible catharsis. As Nightbitch progresses further into exploring this unorthodox premise, it maintains a very distinct tone, caught between sitcom-style broad comedy and darkly humorous satire, traversing the boundary between genres with a precision that is sharp and scathing, but ultimately extremely entertaining, even as its most bewildering.

Nightbitch is a film that is fueled by a kind of devil-may-care audacity that can only come about through the director being on the same wavelength as the original author, the two pairing together exceptionally well in how they present a surreal portrait of motherhood as both an immensely satisfying experience and an endeavour that can entirely change how someone sees the world and engages with their surroundings and the people who reside within. It’s an unsettling deconstruction of motherhood that combines humour and unhinged horror to create a peculiar blend of ideas, which is a bit of a departure for Heller as a filmmaker, but one that she proves is well within her wheelhouse, showing her extraordinary prowess as a storyteller. It’s undeniably going to be a bit of an acquired taste – you don’t need to be a mother (or a parent in general) to see the angle this film is taking or find value in what it is saying, but it is clear that there is particular resonance for those who can recognize the experience of sleepless nights and constant paranoia that comes with caring for a child. Oddly, the perspective this film takes (much like the original novel) is ambigious, since it’s not an apoplectic indictment on motherhood – the protagonist adores her son and wants to be a mother – but it’s also not a glowing endorsement, since it covers the stress and frustration that comes with the journey. It’s sometimes quite uncomfortable and perhaps slightly macabre, and it should not be taken at face value at all (especially by those who aren’t able to see the clear metaphors and genuinely believe this to be a story about a woman turning into a dog, which is an obvious allegory, albeit one that is still enshrouded in layers of surrealism that makes us question the reality of the film), but it is wickedly entertaining and has a genuine affection for its characters that prevents it from being too unhinged to be seen as a sharp, precise commentary on the supposed bliss of suburban domesticity and how it is nothing but a bundle of idealistic delusion.