Amy Adams has more bark than bite

The buzz for this film was incredible: critics and prognosticators were wagging their tongues about how six-time Oscar nominee Adams would finally win the Oscar if she was nominated a seventh time here. This was something people desperately wanted to make happen.

And then everyone got to see the movie. The lukewarm response was the equivalent of running across an invisible electric fence while wearing a shock collar.

Festival scares aside, “Nightbitch” will probably be a hit. Plenty of people can find a kindred spirit in Adams’ nameless, vulnerable stay-at-home mom, a woman who may or may not turn into a dog. I was not one of those people; If you read my TIFF coverage, you already know that I disliked this film intensely.

Mom (as Adams is credited here) has a useless, unnamed husband (Scoot McNairy) who spends most of the year on business trips. When he’s at home, he either plays video games or asks for sex. The last thing on his mind is helping their toddler, who is going through the dreaded stage two.

Their marriage is one-sided, and mom considers giving up her career to stay home with their son. The concept of motherhood and how every woman with children is supposed to be steeped in mother-based ideas and paraphernalia is interrogated in inner monologues, we hear mother speak aloud. Adams does a great job in these scenes, making you wish there were more of them.

Alas, we have to deal with the plot that gives the film its title. Strange changes begin to happen to mother. Her teeth are getting sharper and sharper. Oddly shaped patches of fur grow on her body. She has a taste for raw meat. And in the film’s one truly gross moment, she discovers that she might be growing a tail.

Mom also begins to attract packs of wild dogs, which leave dismembered animal carcasses on her front porch. She is drawn to running with them as they rage through the night.

The man tells Mom it’s all in her head, and both parties are far too nonchalant about these upsetting new developments. When he notices Mom washing tons of dirt off her feet and legs in the shower—and correctly deduces that she’s been running barefoot in the park in the middle of the night—they both don’t care.

If this was a horror movie, you would expect characters to behave abnormally and do stupid things just to advance the plot. But “Nightbitch” is not in that genre, and Heller does so little with its body-horror elements that the necessary transformation scene is rendered ineffective. Don’t promise me a marauding rant on the Alpoen.

Meanwhile film barely explores the roots of mother’s rage; that is, the idea that motherhood involves suffering in silence and the loss of one’s identity. When the husband explains away Mom’s worries about child care by telling her that she needs structure in her life and that “happiness is a choice,” Mom beats the hell out of him. Then we realize it’s a fantasy sequence.

In the final third, “Nightbitch” turns into a standard marriage drama that is too polite to shake the viewer. All we’re left with are a bunch of complaints about how hard motherhood is, none of which are new. The film wants you to listen to its rant, but at the same time it’s strangely apologetic about the request.

Adams does her best, but the truncated nature of the material makes her cringe. McNairy makes her character so clueless that the solution to Mom’s problems is as obvious as Heller’s script giving the family a cat. You know what happens to the poor creature.

“Divorce your husband!”, I wanted to yell at the screen. “Or better yet, turn into a dog and eat him! Then take your bastard child to the pound!” That attitude to counseling is the reason I don’t write the Love Letters column here at the Globe. But “Nightbitch” is a satire that should be more fearless and dangerous. Instead, its bark is far worse than its bite.

★

NIGHT FOX

Written and directed by Marielle Heller. Based on the book by Rachel Yoder. Starring Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy. At Landmark Kendall Square, Coolidge Corner, suburbs. 98 minutes. R (Profanity and sex can get you paws, I mean break.)

Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe’s film critic.