Chaos is wonderfully weird, sensational, if in the end not all that convincing.

| Apr 21, 2025

It all adds up to more artless true-crime nonsense, which has proliferated at an alarming rate in our present streaming era. In this case, you’re far better off reading the book.

| Apr 3, 2025

Chaos: The Manson Murders is less of a documentary and more of an infomercial for Tom O'Neill's book and conspiracy theory that the U.S. government and Charles Manson used the same mind-control techniques to engineer the Manson Family cult murders.

| Mar 30, 2025

After all the excessive mumbo jumbo, not a single thing is proven... it's just another quick grab for those infatuated with serial killers and mass murderers.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 20, 2025

Morris spends as much time retreading the all-too-familiar timeline as he does exploring O’Neill’s implausible assertions, encumbering the viewer with a jumble of deceptively tantalizing conspiracy theories that don’t survive scrutiny.

| Mar 16, 2025

Errol Morris puts out another underwhelming film, in adapting Tom O’Neill’s acclaimed book that questioned longstanding narratives.

| Mar 14, 2025

Morris and O’Neill put a lot out there, but the most compelling part of the film is the maniacal puppet master, his cold, aloof rantings, hold on his subjects and ability to skirt the law and authorities even when he was a known sociopath.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 13, 2025

Instead of building suspense or offering new perspectives, it recycles old narratives and presents them with a glossy but hollow finish.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 12, 2025

An Errol Morris film seriously grappling with the current epidemic of conspiracy theory would be worth watching, but Chaos is hardly that film.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 12, 2025

So many of Errol Morris' documentaries feel essential while Chaos: The Manson Murders feels like it doesn't need to exist.

| Mar 11, 2025

...a valuable historical record with a pertinent updated look. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 10, 2025

Chaos: The Manson Murders may only be 96 minutes long, but it feels padded, as though its existence is meant to serve as proof that even a documentary legend who helped establish the true-crime genre isn’t immune to the genre’s current streaming bloat.

| Mar 10, 2025

It's an ambitious endeavor and only intermittently successful, in part because that's too lofty of a subject for a single film clocking in at 96 minutes.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 10, 2025

Bleak stuff, but handled with a light touch. Morris’s dark capriciousness doesn’t undermine the gravity of the material but underscores its horror.

| Mar 10, 2025

I’m all for Errol Morris, the director behind the best true-crime documentary of all time...making bank delivering new takes on old done-to-death crime stories for streaming services like Netflix. Still, they should be better than Chaos.

| Mar 10, 2025

Ultimately, despite O’Neil’s many theories, I landed where I think Morris wanted me to: Strip away the chaos and noise, and you’re left with a simple truth.

| Mar 8, 2025

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.

| Mar 8, 2025

Another fascinating Morris doc.

| Mar 8, 2025

Despite its 95-minute run time, it’s a little all over the place. As befits the subject matter, I guess. Still, for those used to Morris drawing strands of a story together, it’s a little frustrating.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 8, 2025

There are many more questions in “CHAOS” than hard answers, but one thing is clear, namely the hypnotic quality of Mr. Morris’s filmmaking, enhanced to no small end by the dread in Paul Leonard-Morgan’s score.

| Mar 8, 2025