A pregnant Tate (Hilary Duff), having returned from London returns to her home in September 1969. Waiting for her is husband Roman Polanski’s, best friend Wojciech Frykowski (Pawel Szajda) and his girlfriend Abigail Folger (Lydia Hearst), heiress to the coffee fortune, house sitting while they were gone. They would watch over Sharon until Polanski returned from working on a film in Europe. Polanski was initially supposed to return with Sharon but didn’t. At the beginning of the film, Tate’s ex-boyfriend and current stylist Jay Sebring (Jonathan Bennett) was driving her to the Cielo Drive house from the airport.
The rest of the film focuses on the events of August 1st, 1969 to the fateful morning of August 9th. The Haunting of Sharon Tate supposes that Tate had an inkling of something bad happening in the air. She has several nightmares that play out the factual details of the murders as they’re written in many accounts. Tate is trying to convince all of the others in the house that something is wrong, but they think she is just having trouble sleeping because of her pregnancy and being away from her husband.
“…devote a little bit of time on the victims instead of continuing to romanticize a psychopath, no matter how interesting Manson was.”
Let me just say that the last half of the movie is pretty much entirely fictional, but seen through a very interesting lens on some heavy subjects such as fate, life, death, and reincarnation. It suggests that the “Haunting” Tate experiences might be from…herself? The film takes a lot of poetic license with the truth of these events, and certainly piss off history buffs and Manson fanatics. The fact of the matter is that the film never really claims to be a biopic. Some moments are a bit corny, such as subliminal messages coming from a tape played backward. However, I find the spin that writer/director Daniel Farrands puts on one of the most gruesome murders in history, will make all who see The Haunting of Sharon Tate examine the Tate murders, and maybe our own lives differently.
the fact that you gave a positive review to this piece of garbage completely undermines your credentials as a critic. In face, what are your credentials? Your press credentials should be pulled immediately. Ugh
If you thought that this was a good film, then you may want to consider another pursuit. This film was an abomination and should never have been made, Go to Rotten Tomatoes and read the reviews from the “Top Critics” and maybe you’ll get a clue.
This review is on rotten tomatoes.
This is a stinker. Badly acted, badly staged, badly lit and really distasteful.
John Moraga: I enjoyed this film too for many of the same reasons. Every now and then Hillary Duff really manages to pull something off (“Stranger”), and this is one of them. In my opinion this film, and the director’s cut of “London Fields,” are two of the most vastly underrated of recent years. Can’t help wondering what’s behind it…
Who paid you to write this review? The movie was not only tasteless, but the acting was atrocious. Shame on you for leading people into spending money and time to watch this. It was truly horrible.
This was an intense, moving and gripping film. The audience I saw it with were shocked and some even moved to tears at the end. I was impressed by Hilary Duff’s performance. I suspected that because of the change in narrative something was up and there would be a twist ending, which there was. Having the entire movie set in Purgatory, after the murders took place, and telling the story from the point of view of Sharon and her friends as trapped spirits was, I felt, inventive and very creative. I enjoyed seeing the Manson cult getting what was coming to them. I liked the ending where Sharon and her friends were set free and walked down the road to heaven or whatever the afterlife would now take them. Brilliant and touching film.
Before things go down Sharon and Jay have a conversation when she asks him whether he thinks their fates are pre-determined. Jay says this: “I think there’s infinite choices, infinite realities. We’re probably living out different versions of our own story for… who knows? Probably forever, at least until we get it right”
They replay this conversation at the end of the movie, so the director wanted to make sure we get what the movie is about. I believe that the dreams Sharon has are memories from alternate realities where the murders have already taken place, but through the dreams she gets the chance to make different decisions, so they can survive. I also like how Sharon at the end in an interview excerpt says: “I guess you could say I live in a fairytale world, looking at everything through rose-colored glasses. I probably always will”. Almost as if the director was telling the audience: I know that these murders did happen and Sharon Tate and the others are not with us anymore. But I would like to believe that our reality is only one of many, and in an other reality they are alive and well. You might say this is like believing in fairytales, but that’s just the way I am.
Are you kidding, This was a terrible film. Check out Rotten Tomatoes and read the reviews from the “top Critics”.