Charlie Says

Charlie Says is a fascinating and feminist exploration of Manson’s first victims: the girls themselves.

In Charlie Says, Mary Harron presents the in-between life, the seemingly banal details that orchestrated this perfect storm of destruction. By including diverse female reactions to Manson, we understand more about what happened and how, had circumstances been even slightly altered, it might never have occurred in the first place.

Charlie Says may not reach deep enough into the horrors that birthed the Manson Family, but as an exhibit of pathetically prophetic garble used to dehumanize and control women, it’s attentive and provocative.

Murray and Wever are as attuned to their roles as Smith is awkward and miscast in his. But perhaps that’s an appropriate fit for Harron and Turner’s divisive-yet-gripping take on this story: at the end of the day, the Manson women are deeper, more fascinating, and more worthy of exploration than the insecure man that connected them.

If nothing else, Charlie Says succeeds in demystifying the man with a pentagram carved into his skull: He may be society’s go-to conception of evil, but he was also a drugged-out racist who wrote forgettable songs that even his acolytes probably didn’t enjoy as much as they were letting on.

Charlie Says ... missed a chance to explore the psychology of a cult and instead feels like a gauzy art installation without much focus.

Never catches fire or fully engages the imagination in the nightmarish way it should.

A very simplistic handling of an issue that should not be treated like this and it's surprising that the story tries to explain how women fell to Manson's orders and yet the film is incapable of doing so. Disappointing.

(Mauro Lanari) The ambiguities already present in "American Psycho" (2000) this time become ideological confusion: "I, too, was expecting the arrival of a huge cosmic change at the end of the 60s", says the scholar Karlene Faith with a newly broken marriage and 4 children, "but no one has killed strangers". Sure? Or are we in the territory of traditionally legalized murders versus unconventional ones?

Charlie Says... is not such a wise title to give a movie that might have been an intriguing expose on some unforgivable murders. It’s also further hampered by the moviemakers spending too much time voyeuristically gloating over the unhealthy sexual indulgences of a bunch of feral hippies (with no mention of the STD’s transmitted between this moronic bunch). This graphic porno approach would have had far more dramatic impact if handled less exploitative. The second half of this movie almost seemed to be made by a different team, less sensationalistic, and a little more worthy in its approach – though, still appearing somewhat emotionally manipulative. I agree that it’s important to pursue redemptive rehabilitation on gaoled sociopaths. But don’t believe that too many results warrant a release for perpetrators of hideously repugnant crimes against humanity (we’ve seen too many examples where this has gone badly wrong). This revisitation of the abominable crimes of Charles Manson and his sick crew, tells us little about the lives of these people before becoming members of his free love hippy farm. It wasn’t only Manson’s evil dominating power alone that turned them into killers. – they were free to leave at any time they wanted but, they didn’t - their own personalities, along with the drugs and perverse sex, also had an appealing hold over these easily-led damaged folk. Curiosity tends to keep one watching this entry and at times its interesting but overall there’s not a great deal to learn from the sad experience and, it could have been told with less sensationalized over-indulgence or the added implied PC gender inferences to tick another modern Hollywood box.