Motherhood has a branding problem. According to a recent Pew Research Center study, a growing share of adults under 50 say they probably won’t have children, and women are even less interested than men. There are plenty of practical reasons — the cost of living and concerns about the environment top the list — but the collective cultural drumbeat about just how much motherhood stinks is no doubt playing a part.

For every tradwife social media feed or organic-juicing momfluencer in her clutter-free kitchen who presents a gauzy portrait of idyllic motherhood, we’re served up a sea of scathing counterpoints: Instagram posts about stretch marks, TikTok posts bemoaning messy kid-tossed houses, podcasts discussing postpartum depression, TV comedies like “Workin’ Moms” and “The Letdown,” or the “Bad Moms” movie franchise, that are dedicated to relentlessly telling harsh truths about the gritty, grubby, draining wine o’clock-ness of motherhood.

Into this long season of maternal discontent trots “Nightbitch,” a dark comedy starring Amy Adams as an overwhelmed mom who may or may not be turning into a dog. Her unnamed character, who eventually gives herself the nickname Nightbitch, is an artist starved of her art and frequently down a husband; while he’s away on long work trips, she’s at home losing herself to the domestic grind. Time passes in a monotonous haze of morning hash browns, midday library trips and “night nights,” with a smattering of trucks and trains throughout. At the end of her rope, she suspects this quotidian blandness is smothering the full force of what she senses to be a latent maternal power.

Soon Ms. Adams’s character undergoes a second transformation — since the first one, from woman to mother, didn’t garner much notice from anyone around her. Her teeth get pointy. She’s suddenly into raw meat and not into cats. At the base of her spine, a cyst appears. When lanced, out flops what looks to be a little tail.

The body-horror premise of “Nightbitch” could have been a primal scream for this moment of maternal ambivalence, a stark confessional delivered with a healthy dash of “The Substance” shock value. But the film takes a different path, doing something more surprising, more difficult and certainly rarer than laying bare the horrors of motherhood: It beautifully depicts the joy of parenting a young child.

“Nightbitch” shows maternal love in all its ordinariness and all its glory, a love that’s nestled right next to the fury one might reasonably feel about the transformation that motherhood demands and the lack of social support that mothers often feel. As a tract on parenthood, the film is not a culmination of the current vogue for maternity skepticism but an evolution of it, which makes “Nightbitch” quietly revelatory. It delivers a radical message: that it’s possible to be a good mom and to be monstrous sometimes, too.

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