"Look, if this is not the worst movie of 2019, we are cursed. As a people, we are done. We're no longer worthy of this planet." -Chris Stuckmann, 2019.
The Haunting of Sharon Tate was written and directed by Daniel Farrands, starring Hilary Duff as Sharon Tate. It's based on the gruesome true event of the Charles Manson murders, in which Tate, who was pregnant with Roman Polanski's baby, along with a few of her friends, is brutally murdered by Manson's cult family in 1969. This film decides to take a supernatural approach, in which she's plagued with visions, nightmares, and all that spooky stuff. There's also a theme about fate and changing your destiny and yadda yadda yadda.
I was not intending on writing a full review for this. I heard of this movie and how bad it was, and sometimes, I like to make myself suffer. I'm somewhat of a masochist in that fashion. Plus, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood tackled the Sharon Tate story as well, so I was curious to see how a writer and directer who was not Tarantino would take the story. Now like I said, I had heard how bad it was from various sources. As of right now, it sits with an 8 on Metacritic and a 2.9 user score on iMDB. Going into this film, I knew it wouldn't be good, but I was hoping that it would be at least interesting. Well let me tell you... it's not. It's not interesting, smart, insightful... it's not even so bad it's funny. This truly is one of the worst movies I have ever seen.
For starters, the writing is terrible. The way scenes play are out are full of boring nonsense. For example, the film starts with an unnecessary interview with Hilary Duff as Sharon Tate, followed by an extended sequence full of dead bodies and actual news clips of the Manson murders. The only purpose they serve is to tell the audience that the film is indeed about Sharon Tate. The way the horror elements were incorporated are stupid and not scary in the slightest. Certain scenes would try to build up to a scare but then fizzle out with no real payoff.
This film is very boring. The pacing is slow and nothing interesting happens at all. Plus, the dialogue is utter garbage. Each line sounds completely unnatural, and what the characters actually say is stupid. Every character says things that sound completely unnatural, cliche, and painful. How bad is the dialogue? One of the members of the Manson family actually goes "well well well." You know... like a super villain. That's the level this movie stoops to.
The way the dialogue is structured is also a mess. Tate goes on random diatribes about fate that are completely out of nowhere. The only purpose they serve is to drive the theme of the film home. They don't fit with the scenes they're in at all. The whole film reads like a bad Lifetime film, but of course, with the added bonus of it being based on a true story. I'll get to that in a bit.
The acting is also awful. Every single performance is awkward, wooden, and lacking any sort of emotional depth. I think a good majority of the blame is put on the director. It's like he gave each actor notes on how to make all their inflections and mannerisms as unnatural and forced as possible. Hillary Duff in particular is quite bad. She uses a really weird squeaky voice and an accent that sounds almost Bostonian, but not really. It's interesting, because Sharon Tate was originally from Texas, but that's beside the point. The supporting cast around her is even worse. Not a single one of them were able to convey a believable emotion whatsoever. They all felt so fake. They would say certain things and I would hurt inside because of how truly awful the delivery is. Again, I don't entirely blame the actors. I'm sure they're fine in other films. I blame the director for giving them horrible directions.
Speaking of directions, let's talk about those. There were a lot of very questionable choices throughout this entire movie. The story has so many scenes that lead absolutely nowhere, with many shots going on unnecessarily long. There's about twenty minutes of filler in the 90 minute film. The characters are all paper thin. None of them have any personality whatsoever, and their interactions with each other are very bad. I did not believe they were friends with each other for a second, which is especially embarrassing considering this is based on a true story. The cinematography is incompetent. I could tell most of the film was done handheld, and it all looks incredibly bad. The camera moves around a lot and it doesn't know where to put its attention towards a lot of the time. Most of the shots are medium shots, which gets to be very boring very quickly. There's no variety in the shot composition at all. There are also some really terrible editing choices, including an extended period at the end where an entire ten minute sequence was edited to be in slow motion. The frame rate gets really choppy, and the scene goes on for forever. It was driving me crazy. And the music is probably the most stock you can get. The entire soundtrack sounds like it was pulled off of one of those royalty free music websites. For a student film, it's fine. For a theatrically released movie, it's inexcusable.
What really makes this film awful is how gross it is. I'm not talking about the gore, which all looks hilariously fake, mind you. I'm talking about how grossly offensive this movie is. If you know me, I'm not one to let something deemed as offensive get to me. As long as there is a definite artistic and story purpose, or if it's told in a smart or hilarious way, I don't mind. The Haunting of Sharon Tate has none of that. The whole movie feels very exploitative. There's no big message that its trying to tell, and as a result, the film feels, like I said, gross. There is a theme of fate that the film tries to use, but it's so shoe-horned in that it barely matters at all. And what makes the film all the more offensive is how poorly made it is. If there was some semblance of quality here, then it would not have been so bad. But no. Plus, the members of the Manson family members are portrayed as stern, no nonsense badasses, which is what they wanted to be seen as. Doesn't that sound like a problem? I'm fine with them being portrayed as stupid, over-compensating buffoons like in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, but the fact that the film tried to paint them into these stoic, attractive killers is just wrong. Like I said, I don't like something offensive getting to me, but this film rubbed me the wrong way. And the fact that this film wasn't actively trying to offend makes it even worse.
There is truly nothing redeeming about The Haunting of Sharon Tate. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen. The writing is garbage, the directing is horrendous, the performances are bad, the visual presentation is incompetent, and the way this film tries to portray the Tate murder story is just disgusting. I truly hate this movie with every fiber of my being. It's so bad that it's not fun to talk about. You know those movies that are so bad, you find joy in ripping them apart? You know that nice expel of energy and adrenaline you get in ranting on a bad movie? When I talk about The Haunting of Sharon Tate, I just get exhausted. Writing this movie took longer than I planned because I didn't want to think about it anymore. It truly is the worst movie of the year, and I highly doubt anything I see will top it.
Final Score: 0/10 (Torture)
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