15 Best Movies About Munchausen By Proxy Update 04/2024

Movies About Munchausen By Proxy

The premise of the Hulu series The Act is so outlandish that it’s hard to comprehend. On the other hand, as you may already be aware, it is loosely based on an actual event. Munchausen Syndrome by proxy (MBP) or Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another was uncovered as the grim reality behind the supposedly pleasant relationship between devoted mother Dee Dee Blanchard and her chronically and dangerously ill daughter Gypsy Rose. Disordered individuals, according to Mayo Clinic, “falsely asserts that another person has physical or psychological signs and symptoms of illness, or causes injury and disease in another person with the objective of fooling others.” ” Check out this list of 15 movies about Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy if you’re interested in The Act, which is both harrowing and funny at the same time.

As a character quirk in a subplot, bipolar disorder has been depicted in a few movies. Eddie is in the picture. Although his mother’s hypochondriacal control over his life is omnipresent, it has a lot more going on than his asthma inhaler. A Child’s Cry for Help, a 1994 Lifetime film, was one of the first to put the disorder in the spotlight, however Rolling Stone reports that MBP cases were making headlines in the ’60s. In other films, such as Bubble Boy, Jake Gyllenhaal’s character is given a dose of levity.

Although these movies are enjoyable, they aren’t necessarily accurate depictions of reality. If you want to learn more, you’ll have to do some digging. Warning: this section contains major plot twists.

1. It

In the appearance of a horrible leper, Eddie sees It, which reveals his aversion to illness and germs. In spite of the fact that he realizes they’re really placebos, his mother instilled the habit in him, and she maintains him on a constant diet of pills. If you can call it that, the plot is a gentler version of MBP.

2. The Sixth Sense

The Sixth Sense

Cole encounters a little girl (played by Mischa Barton) who tells him to watch a videotape, which he does. Cole’s action probably spares her younger sister from the same fate as her mother had been feeding her Lysol.

3. Everything, Everything

She can’t communicate with the outside world because of her immunological condition, but when Maddy meets the boy next door, she wants to break free from it. Even though she had been diagnosed with a mental problem, it turned out that her mother was simply using it to keep her daughter “safe.”

4. Fragile

Actress Calista Flockhart plays a nurse who must uncover the source of the harm being inflicted on the children in her care. There’s an urban legend that a ghost named Charlotte is haunting and harming the youngsters in the area. It turns out that Charlotte is not a malicious child, but the nurse who broke and re-broke her bones to keep her in the hospital, where she remained until she died of starvation.

5. The 9th Life Of Louis Drax

The 9th Life Of Louis Drax

In this picture, which could be considered a prequel to The Cell, a handsome doctor examines the comatose mind of a young man who has survived a fall from a cliff… or has he?

6. A Child’s Cry For Help

Two women — a doctor and a mother — square off over the treatment of an ailing child who may or may not be sick in this Lifetime movie

7. Phantom Thread

One to watch out for. Is it possible to employ MBP as a marital aid “voluntarily”? For the first time ever, Alma accidentally poisons her dress-designing husband.

8. Love You To Death

Love You To Death

Marcia Gay Harden plays Dee Dee Blanchard in Love You To Death, a fictionalized version of the same relationship depicted in The Act.

9. Mommy Dead And Dearest

With the use of family home footage and talking-head interviews, HBO’s documentary takes a closer look at the same subject.

10. One Missed Call

There is a twist in Takashi Miike’s kitchen-sink J-horror movie on an MBP case, which is addressed in a very lengthy New Yorker story. There is something even more sinister going on in this picture than meets the eye, as we learn in the course of the story.

11. Repo! The Genetic Opera

Repo! The Genetic Opera

When it comes to the father-daughter connection in a musical about organ repossession with Paris Hilton, his fear of her leaving manifests itself in minor poisoning – a technique to control and keep her close.

12. The Night Listener

What if the proxy doesn’t exist? Is MBP still possible in this case? As a young man’s mother, Toni Colette’s character forms a connection with Robin Williams’ radio program host. It’s only then that his attempts to meet with the young guy he thought was in difficulty reveal how closely the mother’s voice like the son’s…

13. Loverboy

Loverboy

Kyra Sedgwick is the mother who only ever wanted to have a relationship with her child, a case of motherly smothering from the mother’s perspective. It should be clear from the fact that she refers to him as “Loverboy.”

14. Coraline

Coraline’s encounters with The Other Mother, coupled with her mother’s unusual gardening (why would you plant a herb that causes paralysis?), can make you re-examine the already-creepy children’s tale in a new light.

15. Bubble Boy

Bubble Boy

There is an MBP surprise in this lovely, silly romantic comedy about a young man with an auto immune disease who falls in love and races to stop the Niagara Falls wedding of the girl next door… wearing a protective bubble suit… that helps rather than hurts.

When you’re sick and someone offers you soup, you could start to doubt their good intentions, but the films that investigate this peculiar condition will captivate your attention.