Curse You, Ending of “Nightbitch”

Warning: This review spoils the ending of “Nightbitch,” which I hated. 

Here’s the thing: There was a point, maybe ten minutes before the final scenes of Nightbitch, when I was prepared to give it a great review. 

The movie, about a stay-at-home mother whose depression and rage cause her to periodically transform into a dog, has been a joke online for eons. This is partly because of its name (which does, yes, sound like a 30 Rock bit) and partly because, well, it’s a film about mommy problems, and no-one believes the problems of stay-at-home suburban mothers deserve to be taken seriously. The politicized suffering of a class of women is dismissed as “personal,” and moreover as trivial, and so, instead of organizing to demand structural solutions, women are isolated and encouraged to doubt and dismiss their own pain. 

I have rarely seen a movie that is as honest about that pain as Nightbitch. The lost career opportunities, the lost sleep, the lost respect from your peers and pop culture and the world around you; the lack of support, the lack of guidance, the lack of privacy or autonomy or dignity; losing control of your body, as childbirth and pregnancy and post-pregnancy render it unrecognizable; losing control of your mind, as hormones and brain fog and sleep deprivation turn you into a twitching ball of nerves; the cool childfree friends who suddenly look at you like you’re a pathetic Franzia-gulping Hallmark-channel-watching Live-Laugh-Love-poster-owning emissary from The Suburbs; the mutually infantilizing madness of constantly consuming books and songs and TV shows designed for children; going four days without a shower and never more than 30 seconds without somebody needing something; the child, oh, the child! Who is the most beautiful thing in existence, the best person who has ever lived, the reason for you to continue, but who also just woke you up from your first sleep in 48 hours by pushing a dog turd into your face. 

There are moments in Nightbitch where this is all expressed with thrilling clarity; moments when the characters said everything I’d ever tried and failed to say on the matter, or pulled my memories right out out of the bottom drawer of my brain. Yes, those moments are mostly long, wordy monologues, which I assume are adapted from the original novel. Yes, I found myself pulling back at some points — is this too soft? Too cutesy? Too #Resist-lib-coded? — but then I realized all those objections were code for “too feminine” or “too mom,” and that this was a sexist reaction both predicted and accounted for by Nightbitch. (I have seen a lot of snotty childfree people complain about the depiction of snotty childfree people in this movie. None of them ever seem to realize that they’re being trolled.) So I settled into loving it. I wish that was where I’d stayed.