Mother (Amy Adams) is a stay-at-home mom who used to be a cutting-edge artist. Her clueless husband, Husband (Scoot McNairy) is sort of helpful around the house, but is often on business trips, so Mother is alone with their two-year-old, Son (Arleigh Snowden/Emmett Snowden). Mother is abashed that she spends her days cleaning up poo and not making art, but things start looking up when she finds herself becoming a were-dog.
One of the more striking things about the film, that shouldn’t be, is how incredibly brave Adams is to not have a movie star body (though thankfully things are finally starting to happen regarding body love for ladies in Hollywood bigger than a size 0) and not have a face plastered with makeup. Her performance is stunning in its vulnerability and honesty.
However, Mother verges on unlikable for me at times, like in the scene where she feels disconnected from the artist friends she went out to dinner with, so she barks at them and snatches a stranger’s hamburger. She tends to be mean to her husband. He’s trying his best, he really is, but he can be needy while parenting, when Mother really needs a break.
The film elegantly demonstrates that “Motherhood is fucking brutal.” Motherhood is fucking repetitive as well, as epitomized in a scene close to the beginning, a montage of endless days of Mother making breakfast and entertaining Son throughout the day. Motherhood can be soulsucking and thankless and, as Mother points out, your kid might pee in your face without blinking.
The movie emphasizes the loss of identity women go through when having a kid, which men are usually immune to–women are expected to do it all, while men are expected to focus on their careers alone. However, Mother discovers that women are powerful–see below Mother’s friend Liz (Archana Rajan), who’s pregnant and amazing and growing bones without even thinking about it.
But motherhood is also depicted as having its rewarding side. Despite having a fantasy in which she confides about how she’s dying inside having to stay home with him, Mother has a good relationship with Son. She seems to genuinely enjoy spending time with him, despite his keeping her up at night and sometimes making giant messes. I can relate; my youngest is a toddler who has autism. I love him very much, but he can be a whirling tornado of chaos. Mother’s complaint that she’s on “suicide watch” with her son because kids are reckless hit me right in the feels.
Overall, I don’t have a lot to gripe about. I loved the book this was based on, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing this for a couple of years (though I do have to admit the prose in the book was much more moving to me than the voiceover narration in the film). It’s a bit heavy-handed in terms of theme, but as I’ve pointed out, I wholeheartedly endorse all that it has to say. It’s classified as horror (and drama, and comedy), and there are some body horror aspects to it, especially the scene when Mother lances a mysterious lump on her back, and…we’ll leave it there. Her turning into a dog sequences are pretty creepy as well; here she is jerkily sniffing and pawing the ground:
Give it a look if you’re in the mood for something sharp and witty rather than gory.
GhoulieJoe 
Sounds good to me and I like Scoot.
When you say that lady is growing bones what is that? Growing bones inside her body in the form of the baby? Growing an exoskeleton like a nightbitch? I must know!
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I don’t know why, but your comment reminded me of a scene in Body Melt where a woman massages a bone out of a man’s stomach.
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Oh that Body Melt! Good times.
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Body melt? Tappity tappity tappity. Well, I need to see that!
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Lol yes, baby bones–it’s a paraphrase of what the Mother character says to her, “You are this miraculous goddess growing bones as we speak.” I think now I need to make a meme.
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Excellent! Now we’ve had bones and intestines out here recently – pretty soon we’ll have the whole package!
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Wah remind me to never again type “growing an exoskeleton” into an AI image generator.
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I’ll do my best!
*sets reminder
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I got to experience this as my wife worked evenings while our kids were young. I’d come home, she’d leave, and the baby — actually, only my daughter; my son was chill — would be inconsolable, crying for hours. Even so, the period when they were about five and one was the happiest time of my life. Nightbitch sounds a bit too on the nose, but I’ll give it a look anyway👍
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Bah it’s rough when kids have a favorite! It is gosh darn boop on the nose for sure. Plus yeah she is super tough on her husband, unfairly so, I think. She’s really a first-world problems kind of gal.
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Oooh, this looks good. Bit also a little like you’d need to be a parent to comprehend the full, horrific impact…. Oh well. Doesn’t matter. Still sounds like it’d make a good double bill with something like Ginger Snaps.
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I think it might hit a little different if you’re not a mom, because then you might logically conclude that Mother does a lot of complaining when her problems aren’t that serious. But it’s straight-up mind-numbing entertaining a toddler all day, especially one who won’t let you sleep. Ah definitely a spiritual match with Ginger Snaps in that female mysteries are as powerful as they are sometimes a disgusting burden! It’s like if Ginger had grown up and gotten domesticated and then had to relearn how to be wild. Lol the tail scene in Ginger Snaps is definitely more palatable.
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Amy Adams! I haven’t heard anything about her in a long time. This sounds cool and also like a more mature version of “Ginger Snaps” (a movie I absolutely adore).
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Ginger Snaps! That takes me back. Both films are definitely among the subgenre of “being a woman can be a disgusting burden but also awesome”.
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