Episode Guide
The 144,000 Dark Spirits are a mother knows. They are the spirits that haunt her children and her loved ones. They are the ghosts that follow you in your dreams, the shadows that haunt your nightmares. They are the evil that lurk in the dark corners of your heart. And they are always there to guide you to your destiny.
Netflix’s latest true-crime documentary, Lori Vallow: Twisted Mother, shines a harsh light on the life of a woman who started out as a loving mother but descended into a twisted and damaged existence. ..
Lori Vallow has a complicated family history that includes five marriages, a whole bunch of siblings, friends and children. But the focus here is not on the wider family tree but rather one single branch that holds the names of Lori’s two children, Tylee and JJ.
Lori, a seemingly loving mother who has appeared on pageants and the Wheel of Fortune, has a hidden side that is far more alarming. She becomes a believer in extreme apocalyptic ideology, with devastating consequences. ..
The first 50 minutes of the episode focus on Lori’s history, which is gradually pieced together from her interviews and other sources. The second episode shifts the focus to Lori’s beliefs and behaviour, as she starts to slip into an unstable frame of mind.
Lori’s beliefs take on an extra edge of wickedness when she marries Chad Daylow. Soon after, comes the disappearance of both Tylee and JJ. What happened to them? Where are they? Who took them? I won’t reveal that here, especially for those unfamiliar with the case, but the show does a pretty good job stringing this mystery along before revealing the truth late on. ..
The documentary uses archival footage and interviews to flesh out more of the family’s past, Lori’s troubling descent and key parts of this case that make it a much more intricate watch than it otherwise would be.
The pacing is good across the board, although the first episode does bombard you with a whole stack of family trees. I’m not sure whether the accompanying visuals actually help that much, but toward the end of episode 1 onwards, the pace does pick up.
The first two episodes of “Stranger Things” are long, at 48 minutes each. Episode three is only 35 minutes long, making it easy to get into and hard to put down. ..
The Sins of Our Mother is a gripping and unnerving true crime documentary on Netflix. With good pacing and a wealth of detail, not to mention archival footage, timelines and eye-opening interviews, this one’s well worth a watch.
