Pregnant with director Roman Polanski’s child and awaiting his return from Europe, 26-year-old Hollywood actress Sharon Tate becomes plagued by visions of her imminent death.
What’s the purpose of alternate history stories? Often there’s catharsis involved: What if someone killed Hitler before World War Two? Other times there’s pure experimentation: What if the Nazis won WW2? And still, there’s just some weird mixture of both. “The Haunting of Sharon Tate” dabbles in historical fiction but to no effect. Instead of offering some catharsis for an infamous murder, the movie brutalizes its characters butchering the aforementioned lead over and over again, all while using vague intellectualisms to justify its overall story.
How do you make a movie where everyone knows the ending? Make the journey interesting. This movie opens by acknowledging its own ending: Sharon Tate (and her friends) die at the hands of Charles Manson’s crazy cult members. Black and white footage reminds us of the events. Still, the film takes advantage of Sharon’s final days to liberally scare and alarm watchers and speculate about her last couple days. In a way, it’s a home invasion movie crammed into a woman losing her mind story. It’s Hollywood’s most famous murder and the subject of countless movies and TV shows. There’s lots of content to go to for this subject and I do not recommend this one.
I don’t recommend it because the whole movie paints broad strokes what clearly lives and dies by its specifics. The actual murder is well documented and where the audience might find joy in sussing out the easter eggs or setups pointing in the direction of the murder, we’re left, instead, to watch countless revisions of her horrific death. Each murder-dream proves brutal and they never shy away from violence. Still, it doesn’t ring true and we’re left with empty aphorisms to justify this semi-peaceful ending we get. The inevitable ending arrives and we just shrug.
When I say broad strokes I’m talking about characters specifically. Each actor does their work by animating lines devoid of any character intention. We get the basics: three friends, one is pregnant, the other two sleep together. Never does the movie stretch us to get to know the victims other than their signature identifiers: Polish friend, kind caretake lady and pregnant starlet. The murderers get ZERO personality of their own, spewing lines like “I’m the devil,” absent of any real meaning. Kudos to Hillary Duff for working with what she’s got, but she’s never given enough to shine. Her performance wilts after each successive murder.
I don’t normally bemoan a roaming camera. I’ve enjoyed the home video aesthetic before where the camera whip pans wildly. This movie might be the first time I suffered under camera movement. Unsure of where to look this film bobs up and down erratically to no effect. It could be a horrific chase or it could be just two actors having a conversation. Its overuse ruins the effect and we lose the sense of geography within the world. Now they’re at the pool, now they’re in another room.
I do want to congratulate one thing: production design, costuming, and everyone that contributed to the 1970s aesthetic. Sold. Well done. Era accomplished. It works on an aesthetic level. As far as being a period piece this movie succeeds heartily. After that…
I don’t want to pile up criticism because I believe there’s an intention behind this movie to create a sense of closure. Unfortunately, this closure came at too high a cost as the movie failed to pull off its own concept and instead wallowed in numerous murders of the same person over and over again until we wished we were watching the actual murder. It’s brutalizing the victims and failing to really inform the audience of who these people were. Even the elements people fawn over, Charles Manson and his cult, are drawn in with faint lines. All we’re left with is a brutal horror movie with too many endings. My advice? Do the Tate family a favor and skip. They deserve better than they got.
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