You guys probably already know I’m a pretty big fan of true crime podcasts and videos, to the point where sometimes I maybe make myself a teensy bit paranoid thinking everyone out there is likely a psycho killer and they’re all trying to climb in my windows at night. So naturally, I jumped right on both of these movies centered on some pretty infamous killers—the Manson family and Ted Bundy—as soon as they came out. Now, I usually review books, not movies, and I don’t claim to be a film expert (or an expert on much of anything other than being awkward and drinking too much coffee for a person who’s already got anxiety), but it’s still spoopy content that I saw and wanted to share with you all!
The first one I checked out was The Haunting of Sharon Tate, starring Lizzie McGuire and Aaron Samuels Hilary Duff and Jonathan Bennett. This movie is a look at the Tate murders/Manson family murders with more of a focus on Sharon Tate and the victims, rather than on Manson and the cult. It focuses a lot on Tate’s beliefs about fate and destiny and the frightening dreams she had about her own death before it actually happened. A lot of the scary things in this film come from the days leading up to the murders, and the strange occurrences—some natural, some possibly supernatural—that occurred leading up to the fateful day of August 9th, 1969, ranging from seeing the two girls who eventually broke into home, to Charlie Manson showing up at the door in an attempt to find the music producer who used to live there, to music seemingly playing on its own inside the house.
Aside from a perspective on the Tate murders that’s a little different from what we often see portrayed in TV and films, the other main thing that drew me to this was the cast. I still love Hilary Duff and always like to check out her recent roles. I know some people felt it was really out of character or possibly off-brand/in poor taste for Duff to take a role like this, but I think it may just be that for many of us Lizzie-era girls, it’s still surprising to see Duff in more adult roles. It was also cool to see Jonathan Bennett back on the big screen again, playing celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring, which is perfect, because Regina George taught him the most important hair trick years ago.
Okay, sorry, being serious now. In all seriousness, no love lost for Duff, but I’m not sure if she nailed the role of Sharon Tate. I appreciated the attempt, and there were things she did really well. Her bouts of hysteria after her nightmares which often resulted in frustration toward her friends for not taking her seriously were very well acted and believable. Plus, like the real life Tate, Duff is simply gorgeous.
But that accent.
She made an attempt at this kind of high-society, fancy accent, but even when she remembered to do it, it was still kind of awful. The bigger problem though, is that she was constantly slipping in and out of the accent, which made it all the more noticeable when she would put it back on. I was genuinely surprised that at no point did the director step in and just advise that she drop it altogether. It was too distracting, and I would have preferred she just didn’t use it at all and stuck to her normal speaking voice.
The other characters in the film were fairly well acted as well, albeit a bit one-dimensional. I wouldn’t say any of them did a bad job, but they also weren’t anything to write home about (at least according to me).
But I think the main thing I want to talk about here is the way they chose to portray the events. I’ve heard some people say that the slightly supernatural twist they put on the movie is really distasteful and disrespectful to the victims. While I can see where these people are coming from, I do think it was nice to see something outside the box, and I actually don’t think that the filmmakers meant to disrespect the victims or their memories. I think they just wanted to explore a different aspect of what happened.
There are lot of true crime films out there, and straightforward depictions of crimes, as well as things from the killer’s point of view, seem to be a dime a dozen, so I can respect that the writers and filmmakers here were trying to go for something else. They focused on Sharon Tate’s more spiritual side and how that played into her perspective and mindset leading up to the murders. I thought Duff did a pretty good job showing this side of Tate that mused about life and fate and the bigger picture questions—what we’re really doing here, whether we have free will, and what we are meant for.
This focus on the spiritual and on more of an alternative or new age mindset are what make it more of a supernatural perspective. There aren’t ghosts or goblins or anything like that haunting Tate in this movie—I can agree something like that would have been a bit disrespectful to the memory of an actual horrific event. Instead, they just chose to focus on a different aspect of the story: her premonitions and her spiritual beliefs and musings leading up to the event.
There’s a lot of focus in this movie on Tate’s nightmares which, in retrospect, seemed to be almost predictive of the murders, or some kind of ghostly warning. This isn’t fictionalized for the movie—there is actually an interview where Tate talks about her nightmares and “psychic experiences” in which she saw her own and Jay Sebring’s deaths. The movie just delves more into that and portrays the horror leading up to the murders.
At some point pretty early on in the film, the murders are depicted motion by motion exactly how they really did happen—but then it turns out just to be a dream of Tate’s. Nonetheless, these depictions are actually horrifying. I find this sort of thing way scarier than seeing say, Jason Voorhees or Freddy Kreuger chase down a victim, because unlike those situations, this actually happened. Despite the fact that the murders turned out to be a dream for Tate, they were spot on to the accounts of how it really happened and watching these people lose their lives in such an awful manner was really disturbing.
But when it comes to the ending of the movie, I think I interpreted it way differently than a lot of people. Maybe I’m the only one who saw it this way, but I can’t be alone here, so feel free to let me know in the comments! And just to be clear—I’m definitely about to talk about how the movie wraps up, so there will be spoilers ahead.
At the end of the movie, just like in real life, the Manson family breaks into Tate’s house in order to murder her and her three friends. But things branch off from reality here and take a much different turn. In this version, Tate and her friends fight back, getting creative in the ways they outsmart and physically overpower their attackers in order to save themselves and get away. The whole scene is really high tension and also a bit confusing, because if you’re watching this movie and know anything about the real life events, you know that this isn’t what happened, and may find yourself wondering if this is another dream.
At the very end of the movie, after sitting in confusion for a few minutes, I watched as Sharon Tate’s character returned to the site of the murders with her friends, where reporters had swamped the property. She proceeded through the gates where there were law enforcement officials investigating the crime scene and blood everywhere, just like it was in real life. Things got really weird when Tate proceeded past her own body and the bodies of her friends lying on the ground outside the house, even though we knew her friends were also waiting for her outside the gate. In a really disconcerting and emotional moment, we even watch her pull back the sheet and look down at her own bloody body for a moment, before she proceeds inside the house, scoops up what appears to be her baby bundled in a blanket, and then walks out through the reporters with her head held high and meets her friends outside the gate, and the group of them walk away together.
A lot of people I’ve seen talking about this online seem to think that this is really stupid and ridiculous and that what we are seeing is Sharon Tate’s ghost and the ghosts of her friends checking out their own deaths. This is definitely one way to look at it, but that isn’t how I interpreted it at all. The reason I didn’t see it that way is because of the voiceover that’s playing as Tate walks through the crime scene. It’s an audio flashback to an earlier moment in the film when, in one of her introspective, more contemplative moments, she talks to Sebring about fate and destiny, pondering whether or not we are meant to end up the way we do or are destined for certain things. Sebring tells her that maybe there are alternate dimensions, multiple versions of reality, and in each version of reality we are doing making different choices and our stories are turning out differently as a result, but still these realities play out simultaneously. This is a theory that I’ve always been really interested in and pondered over in my own life, as it really seems like a likely possibility and is fascinating to think about. So I enjoyed seeing this portrayed in the movie. I also thought that it was actually the filmmaker’s way of kind of paying tribute to the victims, because I felt he was saying that it’s possible there is an alternate version of reality in which the victims were able to successfully fight back against their attackers, were able to save themselves and continue living their lives. I felt like, although it doesn’t bring much comfort, it was meant to be comforting in some way.
Because I didn’t interpret this as a “ghost” moment and more as an “alternate reality” moment, I didn’t hate this and didn’t think it was this cheesy, awful ending that a lot of people seemed to think it was. I’m not saying I loved it or it was my favorite ever—just that I saw it a little differently than other viewers and I found it an interesting interpretation. Whether or not this movie exploits the tragedy of the Tate murders for money is something that is left up to the individual. Personally, I don’t see what people think makes this movie any more exploitative than any other movie centered on an infamous true crime incident, and like I said, there’s certainly plenty of them out there.
Or maybe the tween version of myself trapped inside of me will always just be a little defensive of Hilary Duff.
Overall, though, I thought the movie was okay. It wasn’t fantastic, it wasn’t terrible, but it was a new take on things, and I enjoyed watching it. I wouldn’t discourage you from watching it at all, but i also wouldn’t try to drag anyone to see it, so to speak. If you want a new take on things or to hear Hilary Duff’s awful accent, see Aaron Samuels looking sexy with his hair pushed back, or have a lot of interest in the Manson family and the Tate murders, definitely check it out, and let me know what you think and how you interpreted it! I’d love to know your thoughts.
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile
The next recent true crime based release I checked out was Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile on Netflix, starring Troy Bolton Zac Efron and Lily Collins. And first things first, let me just get this out of the way now: this title is way too long. I see what they were going for here and why they wanted to use this, but it’s a no from me, dawg. I would have liked it better if it just been shortened to Extremely Wicked, which is what I’m going to henceforth refer to it as anyway. Also, the title is in desperate need of an oxford comma, so I went ahead and added one. Sorry, not sorry.
This one is about Ted Bundy, but it also takes a different perspective on things. I have to say, I appreciate the move that filmmakers are making toward putting out something different. There’s a lot of the same out there, over and over, and I like to see creative minds thinking outside the box. This movie focuses largely on Bundy’s time after he was caught and taken to prison, and the role his girlfriend, Liz, played in getting him arrested in the first place, and the way their lives proceeded and their paths both intertwined and diverged after she made the fateful choice to call police with her suspicions about Ted.
While I probably would have watched this anyway because it seemed like a cool concept and I was interested in the subject matter, let’s be serious, we all know I really came for Lily Collins.
And no worries—she was amazing. All of the acting in this movie was outstanding. I loved Lily as Liz, I really enjoyed John Malkovich’s portrayal of the judge, and goddamn is Efron creepy as hell and totally convincing as Ted Bundy.
He really has come a long way from the Wildcats.
My favorite thing about this movie is definitely seeing Liz’s involvement and then the guilt she is overtaken with after the trial begins, and the really emotional battle she has with herself as she watches the man she thought she knew and loved go to trial for these really horrifying acts that he committed, many of which happened while they were together. I can’t imagine how horrible that would be, and the toll that would take on someone, so I really thought Collins did an amazing job conveying that emotion and struggle.
I would have even liked to see more of that aspect worked into the movie. I’ve read a lot of things about how Liz not only saw the sketches of Ted and realized the similarity to her own significant other, but also how she would sometimes find strange things or things she could not explain in the home they shared. I thought that would have been another interesting thing to incorporate into the film, and if there were anything that disappointed me, it was just that they didn’t do more with that information.
But, of course, the other really fascinating part of this movie was the portrayal of how charming and charismatic Bundy was. People—especially women—loved the guy, and he really won people over and had people falling for him. This made Efron a really excellent choice to play Bundy because not only is he very handsome, but—High School Musical jokes aside—he actually does have the acting chops to pull off that balance between sickening killer and charming personality. I loved seeing him at work here, and it was genuinely disturbing watching the manipulative behavior and personality of Bundy.
These Disney stars really have grown up so fast.
Overall, I thought this was a great movie, I loved the acting, and I loved how it looked at things from a different perspective, rather than being just a bloody, straightforward portrayal of the murders and all the heinous acts Bundy performed. And while we definitely touch on some of the heinous acts (and Jim Parsons as the lawyer drives home how disturbing Bundy’s behavior was), if you’re looking for a gorefest, you won’t find it here. I really appreciate that the filmmakers didn’t go that route at all.
I’d definitely recommend this movie, and let’s be serious, a lot of you probably already have Netflix anyway, so it’s a great alternative if you want to take a two-hour break from watching The Office all the way for the 27th time in a row.
So what about everyone else? Have you guys seen these movies yet? What did you think? How did you feel about the ending of The Haunting of Sharon Tate? Do you think Extremely Wicked should have had a shorter title? Let me know in the comments! You know I’d love to talk. <3