Mommy Dead and Dearest (2017)

Although I have a morbid fascination with true crime, the real reason I watched this is because it took place in Springfield, MO -- my home for nearly 30 years.

A Louisiana mother and daughter relocate to southern Missouri post-Katrina. The girl’s got lots of issues (leukemia, muscular dystrophry, mental retardation, etc) and the community does what it can to help them. When the mother is murdered and the daughter is implicated in the death, everyone’s shocked -- mostly by the fact that the girl doesn't seem to be sick at all.

I wish the filmmakers had dug a bit harder into the early life of the mom. I sympathize with the daughter and think that, yeah, that’s some messed-up crap, but I was riveted by the bits and bobs we get about the mother. She poisoned her stepmom with Round-up -- forcing her to spend 9 months in bed?? She stopped feeding her mother?? She somehow convinced dozens of doctors that her daughter was sick enough to have a feeding tube put in and several other unnecessary surgeries performed??  I mean, how is Mom's psychology not the big story here?

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