Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Jakoba True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

evileyereviews This unflinching flick, nearly 15 years in the making, can hardly be called entertaining by most standards. Instead, Jim Van Bebber has created a flick that reanimates the essence of the stupidity and horror that the disciples of Charley have effected upon the world. The Family's reign of terror is all the more horrifying by account of its random and senseless motivations. The story itself will alienate all but the most ardent of movie fans, those that can see through the ostensibly bad in order to extract the true grit of Van Bebber's intent, which was to tell the story through the eyes of the Family. The acting was at times amateurish, but set upon its chaotic backdrop does not detract from the import of this film. The directing and camera work are MTV on psychedelics intense. For those prudish types stay away, for the leverage of nudity and animalistic gore have tipped the scales and reveal this flick to be on the doorsteps of rated X-ville. A difficult film to recommend, for those interested in the grim fringe of cinema, this might find a receptive audience.Genruk of Evil Eye Reviews

random_avenger Of all the highly publicized American murder cases of the 20th century, the massacres committed by cult leader Charles Manson's followers in 1969 are probably the most infamous. Despite never personally killing anyone, Manson is still often seen as some kind of embodiment of evil and thus an object of constant curiosity. Several films have been made about "The Family" over the decades, one of them being Jim Van Bebber's semi-mocumentary finally released in 2003 after having been in production for nearly 15 years.The frame story of the warped cinematic trip takes place in 1996 when a TV reporter named Jack Wilson (Carl Day) is preparing to interview the incarcerated Family members for his program. Some kind of strange modern followers of Manson have sent him a videotape and are not going to leave their interference at that. The bulk of the film consists of faux-interviews with the Family members and psychedelic flashbacks of scenes from the time preceding the murders. The interviewees Leslie, Bobby, Sadie, Patty and Tex seem to regret their actions, while Manson himself is only seen in the flashbacks as portrayed by Marcelo Games.Instead of a clear, tightly-written plot the jumpy movie favours a fragmented sensory mindf**k kind of approach to its subject. The film's exploitation roots become highly evident during the long home video-like flashbacks illustrating the interviewees' memories full of hazy drug use and gratuitous nudity and sex. The lighting is mostly very richly coloured in red or blue, creating a fittingly otherworldly feel to the scenes of cult bonding under the influence of the charismatic Manson who is seen entirely through the eyes of his followers: he doesn't speak much and remains a distant character throughout. The intentionally grainy, worn-out and damaged look of the film (not only the flashbacks) strengthens the alienating atmosphere as well.At times the film effectively captures the distressing, insane state of mind that the Family members can be imagined to have been in. The Devil worshipping orgy is a highlight among the bizarre scenes, but the colourfully lit final massacres testing the audiences' tolerance to excessive gore are a must see for any fan of hard horror too. The prolonged knife violence and maniacally laughing killers are pretty much what people (or at least me) are looking for in sleazy trash movies like this one anyway, so in that sense Van Bebber and Co. have achieved their goal with flying colours. Perhaps some of the acting is not the most realistic ever, but I cannot consider that a major flaw in a film that is so heavily focused on the effects of brainwashing and not being in touch with one's regular self.In a way The Manson Family is a relative of Oliver Stone's controversial media satire Natural Born Killers (1994), but ultimately comes across as sleazier and more nihilistic since the satirical aspect is less pronounced. I am not sure if the filmmakers have taken a lot of artistic license with the presentation of how the actual events took place; in the end it doesn't even matter since the movie never strives to be an accurate portrait of Manson as a person. As an examination of disturbing group psychosis it works enjoyably and is recommended to those into exploitative true crime stories.

BA_Harrison Being no expert on Charles Manson or his murderous cult, I cannot vouch for the factual accuracy of Jim Van Bebber's The Manson Family. However, having seen more than my fair share of nihilistic, low-budget, ultra-violent horror, I can safely say that this film is one hell of a messed up piece of film-making: a raw, violent, orgiastic, drug-fuelled, psychedelic hell-ride quite befitting of it's subject matter.Van Bebber's visually arresting account of the events leading up to the infamous Tate/LaBianca murders is filmed in a pseudo-documentary style that is highly reminiscent of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, and like that film, it cleverly utilises a variety of film stock, post-production filters, and gritty editing tricks to help convey the unstable, acid-fuelled, collective state-of-mind shared by the enigmatic Charlie and his hippie acolytes. The result is harsh, uncompromising cinema, made all the more unsettling by the fact that what is being shown actually happened.But Van Bebber doesn't stop there: by inter-cutting his reconstructed footage and faux interviews with a contemporary parallel story, in which a modern day 'family' continue the killing, the director also manages to pass comment on the the ever popular 'Cult of Charlie', which has resulted in Manson's likeness becoming a recognisable and marketable pop-culture icon.I don't think that ignorant kids deserve to be shot for glamourising a mass murderer on their T-shirt, but it's food for thought nonetheless.

tonymurphylee **1/2 out of ****By golly, it's about time that a film about the Manson Family wasn't made to be more of an event then it really was. I mean sure, it is very tragic that those people died, I always will mourn for their families and them, being that they were innocent people who did not deserve to die, but the family isn't something that should be really feared. When you really break it down, the members of the cult were not smart people. They didn't ask questions as to what was the purpose was for murdering all those innocent people, they didn't see Charlie as someone who should not be taken seriously, and they didn't even know who they were murdering. They were very foolish people, and they should be anything but feared. I don't understand the rationale of someone who finds the incident of the cult to be so shocking. I mean sure, it's shocking that these people actually went out and committed these murders, but they were just a group of people who had obviously lost too many braincells. That is why I thought this was a good movie. Because it is honest, shows the incident from the evil side, and does it in a responsible and realistic manner.The film structure consists of the members of the family being interviewed in jail about what they did. We briefly see Charlie as the ringleader and we see him as a foolish looking funny man who mostly doesn't know what he is talking about. The film builds up to a Roman Polanski's MACBETH style third act in which the family goes on their killing spree, but by the time they begin to do these things, the audience realizes that these people don't have any rationale except for hate, and they gradually became blinded by it and began thinking that they were doing something of purpose, which they were certainly not.I don't recommend this to the casual movie goer. People who rent this thinking that it's just a horror film are wrong. This is not just a horror film. This is an extremely disturbing, gruesome, tasteless, and senselessly brutal film that just so happens to depict an honest representation of the family. People who will see this film will wonder if it merits any purpose. Indeed, it may not. That is not the point though. The point is that Mario Vanbebbler wanted to make the most realistic version of The Manson Family as possible, so even though the film may not be good, I am happy to say that he has succeeded in doing exactly what he wanted. That is something I greatly admire, and that's why I like this film.Not Rated. Adults only. contains explicit violence and sexuality, and drug use.