Amy Adams

In Nightbitch (2024), Amy Adams rounds her shoulders and flattens her voice until finishing a sentence seems beyond her character’s available energy. The former artist is now occupied with her small son, and Adams makes that exhaustion clear before the voiceover explains it. We were moved by the way she lets her posture sag: the daily work of looking after a child has become visible in how she stands. Her performance is frequently funny, too, without treating the woman’s unhappiness as something we need to stop taking seriously.

The early parts made more use of her optimism and charm. After Brenda Strong in Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can (2002), Junebug (2005) brought her breakthrough as a talkative pregnant woman, and Enchanted (2007) established her as a leading actor. Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016) gave her a science-fiction lead that called on her intelligence and emotional directness. Those earlier roles help explain why the frustration in Nightbitch registers so quickly: we can still recognise a woman who expected rather more from her day.

Marielle Heller does not give her an equally assured film. In Nightbitch, cinematographer Brandon Trost’s flat, warm daylight establishes the domestic routine, but his soft orange nights never make the animal transformation frightening. Production designer Karen Murphy’s disused studio, with canvases stacked against the wall, tells us what Mother has lost more efficiently than the repeated voiceover. Adams has already done that work with her body, and being made to read the explanation aloud does her no favours.

In Cape Fear (2026), the exhaustion gives way to watchfulness. As lawyer Anna Bowden, Adams has the unease of someone who knows the family’s account is incomplete, and making her guilt central is the series’ most useful change. She matches Javier Bardem’s threatening courtesy as Cady, while Patrick Wilson’s Tom practises the small dishonesties that make their marriage convincing. Ten episodes stretch the story too far, but this is some of Adams’s strongest work. Watch it for Adams and Bardem, with patience for the time spent elsewhere.