How Nightbitch brought a year of women's horror to a terrifying end

From critically-acclaimed, spine-chilling masterpieces like Longlegs to hidden, thrilling little gems like Strange Darling, cinemas have been dominated by films that will leave you sleeping with the bedside lamp on.

And yet, despite their vast differences, there is something that all almost of these films have in common – they’re all led by women.

From Elisabeth Sparkle, the once-celebrated, ageing movie star played expertly by Demi Moore in The Substance, to Sydney Sweeney’s take on a modern-day Mother Mary in Immaculate, to Maika Monroe's perfectly-portrayed detective Lee Harker tracking a supernatural serial killer in Longlegs, to Cailee Spaeny’s orphaned miner-turned-xenomorph-killer Rain Carradine in Alien: Romulus, women covered in blood, severing body parts and setting themselves on fire (I’m looking at you, The First Omen) have had audiences flocking to the theatres in their thousands.

And now, despite the days getting shorter, the air filling with the sweet scent of gingerbread, and the imminent arrival of Father Christmas himself, female-led horror films continue to make their mark in theatres – and the latest black comedy body horror, Nightbitch, isn’t one to be forgotten.

And yes, before you say anything, Nightbitch absolutely qualifies as a horror film – just not in the mainstream way.

The film is the latest offering from director Marielle Heller, who also helmed the likes of The Diary of a Teenage Girl and Can You Ever Forgive Me?.

Based on the book by Rachel Yoder and starring Amy Adams in one of her most unique roles to date, Nightbitch follows the story of a nameless mother who, upon learning that she deeply despises the everyday rigmarole of motherhood, comes to the sudden realisation that she can transform into a dog.

What’s so horrifying about that? You might be asking. Well, as it turns out, a lot.

When we first meet our titular 'Nightbitch', she is struggling – and that’s putting it lightly. She's a stay-at-home mother who has had to give up her career, her ambitions, and any semblance of a social life to care for her boisterous young son and overly infuriating, barely present husband.

She lives a repetitive life of cooking, cleaning, attending baby classes and going food shopping, unsupported by a partner who is unable to even let his wife take a 10-minute shower without asking if they’ve ran out of milk. "It’s not babysitting if it’s your own kid," she declares to him after one of his particularly frustrating man-child moments.

It is the mother’s rage and unrelenting exhaustion that catalyses her grotesque canine transformation, and this is where the obvious horror starts to settle in, beginning first when she notices that she is developing excessive amounts of hair and has a brand new set of nipples – and at its most disturbing as she notices a tail growing out of her back in a scene that is akin to that in The Substance when Margaret Qualley's Sue repeatedly jams a needle into the obviously infected wound of her older counterpart.

Later, the mother develops a repulsive relationship with food, begins to feed her son out of a dog bowl, and even murders her own pet cat – and all of that's without mentioning the scene in which her complete metamorphosis takes place: teeth sharpening, bones cracking, hair falling out. It's practically 2024's answer to Ginger Snaps.

But it’s not only the literal grotesquerie that makes Nightbitch so horrifying – it’s also through the themes that it confronts. There are multiple moments in the film that show how motherhood itself can be an embodiment of horror.

From the bloody labour of childbirth to the profound loss of both physical and emotional self, a mother lives in a perpetual, recurring nightmare from which she cannot escape – not for the next 18 years, at least – and there’s certainly more than enough horror in that concept alone.

It seems, then, that this year may have proven that horror is the perfect medium to tell women’s stories. Not only is horror the genre in which women get the most amount of screen time, but it is also the one which can most viscerally, and fantastically, subvert the norm.

Horror allows women to confront their issues without consequence, without having to conform to the expectations of their gender – whether that is the mother in Nightbitch turning into a dog as a literal way to escape her domestic reality, Maxine pulling a gun on her attacker in a dark alleyway in Ti West’s third X instalment, or the true identity of The Lady in Strange Darling being revealed (I won’t spoil that one for you).

And so, I’d like to thank *deep breath*, Nightbitch, The Substance, Longlegs, Strange Darling, Immaculate, Cuckoo, Alien: Romulus, The First Omen, MAXXXine, Smile 2, Don’t Move, and so many more of 2024’s female-led horrors for providing us blood-thirsty scary movie fanatics with some content we can really sink our teeth into, and for reminding us that the genre is more terrifying than ever.

Nightbitch is available to watch in UK cinemas.

Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.