My Paternal Instinct Should’ve Warned Me About Netflix’s ‘Maternal Instinct’

Wade Griggin, Taylor Parker and a horse (right) in Netflix's 'Maternal Instinct' trailer Netflix Logo text

I went into Netflix‘s Maternal Instinct with no sense of what I was about to watch. Really, I only even pulled up the screeners to stop the documentary’s third-party PR company from asking me a fifth time if I’d 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… you don’t need all the details.)

Almost immediately, I regretted the decision. To be clear, that feeling is not an indictment on the quality of the film — it’s solely a reflection of the subject matter. Being a parent didn’t help matters here.

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In Maternal Instinct, directed by Jessica Dimmock (HBO’s Thoughts & Prayers, Hulu’s Captive Audience) and executive produced by Liz Garbus (I”ll Be Gone in the Dark, Gone 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.

“Their relationship appears perfect and within months she’s pregnant and proudly showing off her baby bump all over social media,” the film’s official synopsis reads. “But when a state trooper pulls her over and discovers she has just given birth in her car, her story quickly falls apart.”

And that’s just the beginning. Maternal Instinct slowly plays its way to “exposing the truth behind a terrifying and unthinkable crime,” it continues.

I didn’t see the “unthinkable crime” coming — not by a mile. Either the story didn’t travel 1,369 miles to these, here parts (suburban New Jersey), or I’m simply bad at keeping up with the news. It’s 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 “relatively unknown.”

I won’t spoil it, though that’s probably not the right term here. Maybe it’s more like I won’t horrify you. Don’t Google “Taylor Parker” if you don’t want to know how this all plays out — or if you simply want to keep your lunch down.

Maternal Instinct is a tough watch but a well-made documentary; Dimmock doesn’t give away the (pecan) farm all at once. It was a purposeful creative choice, she tells The Hollywood Reporter, one that she says “in some ways is the closest thing that mirrors what happened to the victim and the victim’s family.” 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’ll realize just how “terrifying” the truth is.

Jessica Dimmock pictured with her partner Zackary Canepari, with whom she made Thoughts & Prayers. Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images

Dimmock, too, was unaware of Parker’s crimes before being approached to direct. It was first-time documentary producer Samantha DeMaria who brought the story to Story Syndicate.

“Her instincts, that this was just something really out of the ordinary, were really switched on,” Dimmock said, “because she got this in her claws and wouldn’t let it go.”

The same can be said for Dimmock once she got her hands on the subject matter. I asked the true crime producer if this is “the worst story [she’s] ever heard,” which would be saying something, given the genre she works in. “Pretty much,” she responded.

“It’s hard to compare tragedies, because every time, for whoever is involved, it is the worst thing,” Dimmock added. “I don’t want to make light of anything else, but there’s a cruelty to this.”

That’s an understatement. Maternal Instinct is streaming now on Netflix.