Writer-director Marielle Heller is swinging for the fences and beyond with this fantasy-satire adapted from the 2021 novel by Rachel Yoder, but it shifts away from half-hearted body-horror and allows its feral growl to become a purr of earnest assent to bland ideas of earth-mother solidarity.
Amy Adams gives what could be the biggest and most ambitious performance of her professional career in the lead and she is always very good. She plays a woman who’s been talked into abandoning her artistic career by her husband to be a stay-at-home mom to their lively little boy. Finding herself descending ever deeper into boredom, depression and secret snarling rage she also starts to discover weird tufts of body-hair and realises she is turning into a dog. Scoot McNairy is robust and plausible as her husband, and there is a nice cameo from Jessica Harper as the local librarian Norma, who shrewdly sees in our heroine’s eyes her pain and potential inner strength.
