Now, Adams returns to the horror genre for the first time since her supporting role in 2000’s Psycho Beach Party, starring as Mother in the film Nightbitch.
Scoot McNairy plays the role of Adams’ on-screen husband, while Zoë Chao, known for her work in Love Life, plays one of Mother’s friends.
Nightbitch is adapted from Rachel Yoder’s 2021 novel of the same name, a dark comedy horror about a stay-at-home mom who has left her career to care for her child, while her husband continues working.
However, events take a strange turn as Mother (Adams) begins to embrace her maternal instincts, which bizarrely start to take on a canine form.
Indeed, Adams appears to transform into a dog in Nightbitch… or does she?
Directed by Marielle Heller, the director expressed her intention to leave the ambiguity of whether Mother truly becomes a dog up to the audience.
“I think it’s kind of nice if everybody gets to make their own conclusion,” she told UNILAD.
“I sort of love the ambiguity that I felt in the book when I read Rachel’s book. And so the aim of the movie was also to not fill in all of the answers for you, but I’ll leave a certain amount of that up to discussion.”
Heller, who is a mother herself, mentioned that having a child can awaken an ‘instinct that takes over’.
“When I had my son, suddenly I felt these like instincts of like, I’ll protect him at all costs,” the director said.
“I just felt like this desire to like I could hurt someone if I had to, to protect this child.”
Heller continued: “There’s like something deep, animalistic inside that’s ancient, that’s coming through me, that’s telling me how to do this job of being a mother, and I think that’s what I’ll say about how much the dog stuff, just it comes from that place of admitting we’re animals.”
In another part, Adams discussed how she prepared for the unique role, which involved scenes like eating food from a bowl with her son.
In an interview with UNILAD, Adams shared that there had to be ‘a willingness of openness’.
“I think one of the great things of this role is that the preparation was really just a willingness to be open,” she explained.
“I did all the preparation as far as, like, all my normal work of digging into the character’s past and building a life and creating a reality in which she could exist in this way. But then [Heller] did such a great job at doing like tonal shifts and then also working with the kids and working with the dogs.”
Adams added: “It was just a real lesson in flexibility and being open.
“That was sort of how I prepared – it’s just mentally understanding to expect the unexpected and be open to it, which is sort of like parenthood.”
Nightbitch is set to release in theaters on December 6.