I care a lot is a vicious and immensely entertaining pitch black comedy which in a way feels like the current day answer to something like Kind Hearts and Coronets. I.e. everyone in it is terrible in different ways, objectively terrible things happen which are are nonetheless are nonetheless treated in a comedy way (think Louis offing his various relations, all played by Alec Guinness), and there's social criticism if you squint, but mainly it's an excuse for having good actors play clever evil characters.

In this case, I suspect the director and writer, J Blakeson, must have seen Rosamond Pike in Gone Girl and thought "That, but even more amoral!" Here, Rosamond Pike plays Marla, whose very successful grift involves having a doctor in her pocket who provides her with false diagnosis of dementia for well-off elderly people with the no family in the picture, then gets appointed as their guardian by a a state order, and once she's got the old folks sedated and isolated at a home that works with her as well, she starts to drain their accounts. This she does with ruthless efficiency and with the help of her lover and partner Fran, and the way that Marla being in a same sex relationship is a complete non-issue in the movie (i.e. it's treated the same way a het romance-plus-business-partnership would be, none of the other characters make homophobic remarks, and it's not used as a Freudian excuse for Marla being how she is) is one of its many good traits. Inevitably, Marla once comes across the wrong mark, because the supposedly ripe-for-plucking Jennifer Peterson (played by Dianne Wiest) is really a fake identity for our other main character's dear old mother, which is necessary since our other main character is a Russian mobster played by Peter Dinklage.

Now when I had read that premise of the movie, I wondered how they'd deal with the inevitable questions, such as: why would a Russian mobster not kill Marla immediately? (Thus ending the movie way too early.) Or why would Marla, no matter how greedy she is, not get the hell out of dodge the moment she realizes who her latest victim really is? And the film managed to sell me on the answers it gives to that, while offering fantastic actorly fireworks as it's Pike vs Dinklage, both having immense fun as their predator characters determined to outwit each other. As they're both evil - just because Dinklage's character cares about his Mom doesn't mean he's not vile to everyone else, just as Marla being in a loving and committed relationship with Fran doesn't change her exploitation of everyone else - it's not a question of whom to root for. The only downside is that if you take a breath between sparrings and schemes to think about the real life horror of elderly abuse, you shiver, because for all the satiric exaggarations what Marla does sounds chillingly plausible. But if you're not triggered by this, it's an excellent way to spend two hours (on Netflix).