Critics reviews

O’Neill ultimately confesses that his book is titled CHAOS because this story is “chaotic.” In the final tally, however, Morris’ adaptation of said tome is equally scattershot, unable to connect the dots that O’Neill couldn’t, and unwilling to say something about that failure and the common desire to seek complex answers to relatively simple questions. It’s enticing hearsay, but hearsay nonetheless.

The trouble is that while Chaos: The Manson Murders was directed by Errol Morris, it doesn’t really feel like an Errol Morris movie until around halfway through, when it turns from a film about the Tate-LaBianca murders to one about Tom O’Neill, the author of the 2019 book on which it’s based.

Just by looking at it, you would say that Morris' Netflix project is pretty much the same as any other true crime Netflix project, with the added ominous soundtrack in case you haven't realized just how scandalous and scary everything is.

Morris’ presence is gentle throughout, and it could have been so easy for him to turn his lesser-seen comedic eye (have you seen Tabloid?) on O’Neill as a modern Don Quixote and suggesting that this is his Zodiac. But Morris seems to realize very early on — if he didn’t know already — that this is a story that will never end, and he embraces O’Neill’s uncertainty.

O’Neil spent 20 years investigating the Manson murders, uncovering inconsistencies and floating countless theories. And look: I love Errol Morris, but for a while, this thing plays like a Joe Rogan podcast, but mercifully, only half as long.

Morris’ film best serves as a visual primer on the Manson case and a fairly compelling advertisement for O’Neill’s more thorough book.

Morris is too pragmatic and calculating a filmmaker to make the documentary that CHAOS and Netflix suggest it’s going to be... It’s a complicated meta-commentary delivered loosely in the guise of a ghoulish conspiracy thriller, presented in rushed form to an audience that would happily devour many more hours of the actual ghoulish conspiracy thriller that this is not.

“CHAOS” gives off a deep-dig archival glow typical of contemporary documentaries, with a fair amount of photographs I’d never seen before of the settings of the Manson crime scenes... What’s newer than the photographs, however, is the art-grunge treatment Morris frames the entire film with... The whole movie is designed as a sick-crime art object.

Culling the most vital elements of the book into an easily digestible 96-minute Netflix documentary, Errol Morris’ CHAOS: The Manson Murders is an absorbing, albeit succinct adaptation of various theories that likely will never see a burden of tangible proof.

There are remnants of the now-established Netflix true crime style in “Chaos,” most notably the irritating little introduction to what’s about to happen in this documentary, a kind of mini-trailer for itself... But Morris has clout that exceeds most documentary directors, and this is mostly his movie: curious, skeptical, dependent on interviews conducted by the director.