Hilary Duff stars as Sharon Tate in Daniel Farrands’ The Haunting of Sharon Tate. In the film, pregnant Tate waits at home for her husband Roman Polanski’s return from Europe along with three of her friends. Suddenly she becomes plagued by nightmares and terrifying visions of their deaths.
The film builds tension with these visions and nightmares along with Tate’s fear and growing paranoia, right up to the last moments of the film. But the thing is, none of it happened in reality. When making a film that poses a “what if” scenario, a filmmaker takes a huge risk, especially when the real event is so well known. Often they aren’t successful, this is one of those times. I’m not sure what exactly they were trying to accomplish by twisting the reality of Tate’s last few days, especially the way the film ends. It left me scratching my head, wondering what the point of the film was. I mean if an eight months pregnant woman really was terrified and scared for her life, why the hell would she stay? That was a big issue with me.
I have to bring up the dialogue in the first half of the movie, it was labored and just sounded off. Halfway through the dialogue improved some but still failed to impress. I lost count of how many time “fate” was brought up throughout the film, but are they really saying that it was six people’s fate to be butchered?
Though Tate’s nightmares and visions in the film, it appears that they are attempting to give Charlie Manson almost supernatural powers. He was an evil man who happened to be a terrible human being. He was charismatic, manipulative, and clever, but that’s all.
We watch the murders twice. One dream version, closer to the real story, and an alternative version that ends with Tate and the group having survived the night only for Tate to return to the house and find her own body, making the last third of the film completely pointless.
I wish that I could say this was a great film, I hate giving negative reviews, but I have to be honest, it just wasn’t great. In fact, I found myself thinking “what the hell?’ more often than I found this film entertaining.
Six lives were lost the night of the Tate murders, Tate, her unborn baby, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Paul Folger. I can’t help but that trying to change the reality of their murders for a film is a bit of an insult to their memory.
The Haunting of Sharon Tate will be out on Blu-ray™ and DVD June 4th, which includes an audio commentary with writer-director Daniel Farrands and a never-before-seen featurette. If you’d like a second opinion of the film, check out DanXIII’s review.
BLU-RAY / DVD / DIGITAL SPECIAL FEATURES
- Audio Commentary with Writer-Director Daniel Farrands
- “Premonitions: The Haunting of Sharon Tate” Featurette
