{"id":864419,"date":"2026-06-13T11:42:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T11:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/864419\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T11:42:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T11:42:26","slug":"my-paternal-instinct-shouldve-warned-me-about-netflixs-maternal-instinct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/864419\/","title":{"rendered":"My Paternal Instinct Should’ve Warned Me About Netflix’s Maternal Instinct"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tI went into Netflix<\/a>\u2018s Maternal Instinct<\/a> with no sense of what I was about to watch. Really, I only even pulled up the screeners to stop one of the documentary\u2019s producers from asking me a fifth time if I\u2019d watched. So I went to my Preview Content hub, selected the film without so much as a thumbnail, and dove in. (Well, I did so after I got the authentication code sent to my cell phone, keyed it in\u2026 you don\u2019t need all the details.)<\/p>\n

\n\tAlmost immediately, I regretted the decision. To be clear, that feeling is not an indictment on the quality of the film \u2014 it\u2019s solely a reflection of the subject matter. Being a parent didn\u2019t help matters here.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Maternal Instinct, directed by Jessica Dimmock (HBO\u2019s\u00a0Thoughts & Prayers, Hulu\u2019s\u00a0Captive Audience)\u00a0and executive produced by Liz Garbus<\/a> (I\u201dll Be Gone in the Dark,\u00a0Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer), a young woman from a wealthy family falls in love with an East Texas hog trapper. Classic girl meets boy stuff, just with a trailer full of pigs sold for slaughter. The swine are not the only ones who will be slaughtered.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTheir relationship appears perfect and within months she\u2019s pregnant and proudly showing off her baby bump all over social media,\u201d the film\u2019s official synopsis reads. \u201cBut when a state trooper pulls her over and discovers she has just given birth in her car, her story quickly falls apart.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd that\u2019s just the beginning. Maternal Instinct slowly plays its way to \u201cexposing the truth behind a terrifying and unthinkable crime,\u201d it continues.<\/p>\n

\n\tI didn\u2019t see the \u201cunthinkable crime\u201d coming \u2014 not by a mile. Either the story didn\u2019t travel 1,369 miles to these, here parts (suburban New Jersey), or I\u2019m simply bad at keeping up with the news. It\u2019s probably a little bit of both, and yes, I recognize the latter is not great coming from a journalist. Cutting myself some slack, even Netflix describes the crime at the center of the story as being \u201crelatively unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI won\u2019t spoil it, though that\u2019s probably not the right term here. Maybe it\u2019s more like I won\u2019t horrify you. Don\u2019t Google \u201cTaylor Parker\u201d if you don\u2019t want to know how this all plays out \u2014 or if you simply want to keep your lunch down.<\/p>\n

\n\tMaternal Instinct is a tough watch but a well-made documentary; Dimmock doesn\u2019t give away the (pecan) farm all at once. It was a purposeful creative choice, she tells The Hollywood Reporter, one that she says \u201cin some ways is the closest thing that mirrors what happened to the victim and the victim\u2019s family.\u201d Her film takes its time getting from its shocking opening to its even more shocking conclusion, but when the end finally informs the beginning, you\u2019ll realize just how \u201cterrifying\u201d the truth is.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJessica Dimmock pictured with her partner Zackary Canepari, with whom she made Thoughts & Prayers.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJon Kopaloff\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tDimmock, too, was unaware of Parker\u2019s crimes before being approached to direct. It was first-time documentary producer Samantha DeMaria who brought the story to Story Syndicate.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHer instincts, that this was just something really out of the ordinary, were really switched on,\u201d Dimmock said, \u201cbecause she got this in her claws and wouldn\u2019t let it go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe same can be said for Dimmock once she got her hands on the subject matter. I asked the true crime<\/a> producer if this is \u201cthe worst story [she\u2019s] ever heard,\u201d which would be saying something, given the genre she works in. \u201cPretty much,\u201d she responded.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s hard to compare tragedies, because every time, for whoever is involved, it is the worst thing,\u201d Dimmock added. \u201cI don\u2019t want to make light of anything else, but there\u2019s a cruelty to this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s an understatement. Maternal Instinct is streaming now on Netflix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I went into Netflix\u2018s Maternal Instinct with no sense of what I was about to watch. Really, I…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":864420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,352364,4659,22081,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-864419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-maternal-instinct","tag-netflix","tag-true-crime","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116742623537339216","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}