Critic Reviews

There are many more questions in “CHAOS” than hard answers, but one thing is clear, namely the hypnotic quality of Mr. Morris’s filmmaking, enhanced to no small end by the dread in Paul Leonard-Morgan’s score and even in the demo recordings by Manson of his songs (which might have been sung by someone like Johnny Mathis, weirdly enough).

This isn’t just about fringe cults on ranches anymore: It’s about social groups, theories about the world, the bubble you float around in on the internet, the candidate you believe in an election.

While the documentary doesn’t provide conclusive proof of a link between any covert government operations and Manson, it’s at least fodder for lively debate (not to mention a Netflix documentary).

Maybe it’s a copout to argue that a film’s makeup is deliberately frustrating and disordered because it reflects a frustrating, disordered reality; maybe it’s a filmmaker’s job to force some coherence onto the chaos. But when you’re dealing with evil that has no easily discernible justification, it’s probably best to accept that the mystery will never satisfy.

Only Errol Morris could make a murderer in prison come off more credible than pretty much anybody else in a true crime documentary.

Morris' strength lies in the interviews he conducts and the narrative he's capable of creating through them. The director is not at all interested in making a straightforward adaptation of O'Neill and Piepenbring's book, instead chatting with many actors involved in the Manson case, from Bugliosi to Manson family member Bobby Beausoleil.

For all its avenues of inquiry, however, it never quite gels into more than a collection of tantalizing but unfounded theories.

Maybe the Manson murders are not meant for easy explanation, which in part seems to be what Morris is getting at. Maybe we’ll never really know the answers. But we don’t seem to be able to stop looking for them.

It’s a complicated meta-commentary delivered loosely in the guise of a ghoulish conspiracy thriller, presented in rushed form to an audience that would happily devour many more hours of the actual ghoulish conspiracy thriller that this is not.

“CHAOS” ends up suggesting that the Manson murders were a grand plot, orchestrated from on high (by the CIA? the Deep State? Nixon?) to turn America against the counterculture. I don’t believe that theory for a second, but there’s one way I think it stays true to the spirit of Charles Manson: It’s pure madness.