Literature is no stranger to fast-moving trends. The YA dystopian novels of the mid-2000s, the Vampire novels and paranormal romances a few years before that… Even the gigantic “spicy romance” or whatever moment we find ourselves in now. The pace at which trends come and go is even more rapid during the ultra-digital age. In the last few years, platforms like Instagram and TikTok have cornered the market on what is hot and what’s not in fiction. Referred to casually as Booktok and Bookstagram, the platforms have recently created a label for a micro-genre they call “Weird Girl” Fiction.
What is ‘Weird Girl’ Fiction, though?
Great question. Weird Girl Fiction seems to be a more specific off-shoot of the pre-existing Weird Fiction micro-genre. Authors like Chuck Palahniuk, Irvine Walsh, Brian Evenson, and Franz Kafka have been wriggling around in the genre for quite some time. Weird fiction can be defined as:
Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction that combines supernatural, horror, magical realist, and fantasy elements. Speculative fiction focuses on stories containing speculative elements that do not exist in the real world.
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So, I would say Weird Girl Fiction is basically that, but it centralizes women. Usually, the subgenre seems to include some sort of inner distress that spirals into an implausible, yet vaguely believable metaphor. The metaphorical element stands in for the sanity break the female protagonist experiences. At the end, she is forced to decide if she is going to run headlong into the cerebral other-world, or learn from it and maintain normalcy in her life.
A quick Google search featuring the search term “weird girl books” will yield a handful of repeat offender authors: Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Eileen), Eliza Clark (Boy Parts, Penance), and Jen Beagin (Big Swiss). It is everywhere, but that does not mean it is for everybody or that it should be adapted for film. The Weird Girl Film movement is a genre we are all about to face straight on.
Why wouldn’t such successful books make successful movies?
Well, I’m glad you asked. Many of the books in this genre, as I mentioned, rely heavily on cerebral and metaphorical content to help further the story. On screen, this doesn’t always translate in such a smooth way. As a lot of Weird Girl books have become insanely popular, more of them are being adapted for the screen. There are even genre-specific book clubs. That’s how popular this stuff is getting. All that said, I think the best way to understand why some of these beloved, freaky books don’t work as adaptations is give some examples.
Nightbitch (2024)
Rachel Yoder’s 2021 magical-realism novel Nightbitch made it to the big screen last year. The book follows a woman called Mother. Mother and her husband, who is aptly named Husband, have hit a roadblock in their marriage. The problem? Well, there are a few. The greatest among them is that Mother believes she is turning into a dog. By night, Mother has fantasies of running free in her neighborhood as the gang leader of the local pack of strays. Although, they may be more than fantasies. Basically, the reader can’t really tell the difference between what is real and what is in Mother’s head.
Yoder’s book is genius, and extremely compelling. I wish I could say the same for director Marielle Heller’s 2024 adaptation of it. Nightbitch (2024) struggles almost exclusively because of its medium. The book is so elusive and uncertain. Film is a direct medium that relies on showing a story visually. Nightbitch as a book works so well because of how it is seated in the protagonist’s brain and detached from reality.
Unfortunately, the movie can’t tell us about that detachment. Instead, it has to show us Amy Adams transforming through CGI and practical FX into a dog in a way that destroys any sense of tone the movie had going for it. The messaging about feminism and becoming wild are lost behind the clunky CGI dog thing in a way that cannot be recovered from.
While Nightbitch really struggled, is it possible to adapt a weird girl book successfully? We are on the verge of about a million of these coming out… Say that there is hope!
I think that there just might be hope in a little film called…
Poor Things (2023)
While the 1992 book Poor Things sort of predates the newly named Weird Girl genre, it has many of the same conventions. Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things is a postmodern adaptation of Frankenstein, but follows a young and monstrous woman named Bella Baxter. She is learning everything about her humanity for the first time as fully grown (reanimated?) woman. Obviously, this is an impossible narrative to us, but the bizarre and fantastical world of the story is, fittingly, weird.
What makes Poor Things so successful compared to Nightbitch is that it leans into and accepts how strange it is. The film’s tone is bizarre. It maintains zero element of normalcy in its art. Poor Things parallels it strangeness with revolution. Everything is revolutionary to a protagonist that knows nothing.
Even the most normal things are a shock to one that has never experienced them, which makes Poor Things much more adaptation-friendly than a story that turned out as jaded-seeming and detached as the adaptation of Nightbitch. While Poor Things is grounded in unreality, the ethics of humanity within it are honest and sharp. That creates a story worth watching.
Poor Things gives me hope that strange, messy feminist works are something mainstream film fans do desire and deserve to see. There are so many beautiful and freaky girl books out there, we just need to tap into the correct way to adapt them. The tools are all there and audiences are hungry.
What else is to come?
For years now, we have been watching a will-they/won’t-they for Weird Girl genre standard My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. It has been optioned for a film, but continues to hang in the balance. It is book about an unnamed young woman that’s privileged existence has driven her insane. She has decided, under the guidance of her insane psychiatrist and a deranged performance artist, that she will force herself to sleep for the better part of a year.
Maybe not the best adaptation for a film since that implies very little action, but I am curious.
Fans want actors from Anya Taylor-Joy to Sydney Sweeney to take the leading spot. Hypothetically, the director that could front this project is rumored to be Yorgos Lanthimos of Poor Things fame… That’s pretty fortunate too. More news crops up every few months, but we have found ourselves in a dry spell. But surely, we will have plenty of Weird Girl movies in our collective futures.
