'Nightbitch' (2024) with Amy Adams got pretty terrible reviews and we almost skipped it but are very glad we didn't. I cannot recommend it highly enough for current and recent toddler-parents.

9:30pm, our three-year-old daughter is finally down, and my wife and I decide to crash on the couch and watch TV for "20 minutes" before switching off our consciousness for a few hours and doing it all over again. I was an indie film nerd in my former life and am slowly getting back into it after the mind void of the first two years of parenthood. As it turns out, that 20-or-30-minutes before lights-out every night is the perfect time to start up a weird new film and determine whether or not it's worth sticking with. If it's intriguing, that is the film of the week and we'll watch it in three segments over the next few evenings. If it's not, no big loss.

Something about Nightbitch appealed to me, probably Amy Adams and the unique premise, but I knew that it had pretty terrible reviews (and not just from casual film viewers but from indie film nerds too -- generally not a good sign). But I suggested it to my wife, thinking that it would probably be a stinker and that we'd give it 20 minutes and then never think of it again.

Wrong. We kept our eyes pried open for an hour-and-a-half to see it through to the end. We had no choice --we were in a state of enraptured catharsis. We have been discussing the film whenever we have a free moment for the past three days. This ridiculous film somehow opened up a little hidden vault of empathy that my wife and I didn't know that we had for each other. Watching it together on the couch after a day of battle did more good than ten couples counseling sessions. That was us up on the screen in so many ways, and we were seeing each other and ourselves in this detached and absurd way that just melted away all of our built-up defenses. It also made us take notice of the ways in which our individual personal strengths had averted at least some of the struggles that the on-scene couple was going through.

I understand why Nightbitch was not popular. As a film, it's no Casablanca or anything, just a pretty standard indie dark comedy, sometimes a little on-the-nose or messy. For someone who has never been through the... experience... of toddler-parenting, I can see how it would feel like 100 minutes of nausea-inducing psychological torture with a healthy side-serving of cringe. But, if you're going through this, or went through it recently enough that your brain hasn't smoothed over the rough edges of your memories -- this film was made for you, made for us. And for those of you, I know that you might be thinking, "Why would I want to see that on the screen? That's my every day." Well, that's where the artistic aspect of it all comes in. The film presents the struggle that we all know too well in absurd, darkly humorous ways that just might give you a fresh perspective on parenting and on yourself. And I think anyone would go a little bit easier on themselves (and their partner, should they have one) after viewing Nightbitch.