Marielle Heller Says ‘Nightbitch’ Test Screenings Felt Like Someone ‘Poured Cold Water’ on Her

When Marielle Heller first started adapting Rachel Yoder’s darkly satirical “Nightbitch,” she knew it wasn’t going to be for everyone. The story follows an unnamed Mother (Amy Adams), dealing with the primal chaos of motherhood and a fledging marriage to a diminutive Husband (Scoot McNairy), who suddenly starts transforming into a dog. For women, it was meant to serve as comic recognition of the physical and mental challenges they face in this deeply patriarchal world, but to men, much of the film‘s content may come across as horror. In a recent interview with The New Yorker, Heller describes attending the first test screening with her brother, Nate, who scores all of her films, and the immediate dread that fell over them as they heard from male members of the audience.

“He said it felt like we were in Vegas and there was a ‘cooler’ in the audience, like, someone who ruins luck . . . who ruins a streak,” said Heller of her brother’s reaction to the reviews. “It felt like someone had just poured cold water on us. Like there was some pervasive, misogynist, male . . . Maybe I’m getting myself hyped up for something that won’t happen — but I started thinking, ‘People might really hate this movie.’ For reasons that make my heart hurt.”

Pointing out one particularly irksome comment earlier in the interview, Heller said, “One guy said, ‘Why would a man want to see this movie? There’s no men in it, and the only one has hardly any lines.'”

While it may come across as terrifying to men, Heller never intended for “Nightbitch” to show motherhood as some awful experience, but rather one with more nuance than has been heretofore shown on screen. In reflecting on the birth of her first child coinciding with the release of her debut feature, “Diary of a Teenage Girl,” Heller shared that it was motherhood that really gave her the bite needed to pursue her art.

“My husband got really upset if I made jokes about, like, ‘These are my two babies, coming into the world at the same time!’ He was, like, ‘O.K., one’s the human — let’s keep this separate.’ But, you know, for me, they were really tied,“ said Heller, adding, “Somehow, the really satisfying stuff has flooded right up against the babies.”

Speaking to IndieWire at the time of the film’s premiere at TIFF, Heller expressed antipathy toward men who don’t wish to engage with the narratives she’s put forth with “Nightbitch,” as she’s had to experience plenty of art that doesn’t consider the female perspective and feels others should be exposed to the flip side.

“I think I spent my life growing up relating to male characters, and I don’t see why female characters can’t be related to by everybody. I don’t think that gender is such a binary or that’s something we need to be dividing,” said Heller to IndieWire. “I think I have parts of myself that are very inherently male and very female, but I also just do love men. I love people. I’m married to a man. I have a wonderful dad who’s here. I made a little man. I care about the genders understanding each other more than I care about tearing us apart.”

Searchlight Pictures releases “Nightbitch” in theaters on December 6.