Charlie Says will surprise you, shock you, move you and make you change your mind several times.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 12, 2023

Harron's thoughtful, psychologically complex approach to films about killers and pinup models have a way of undermining the subject's inherent salaciousness.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 2, 2022

The most relevant of the Manson Family films.

| Original Score: A+ | Feb 24, 2021

...unless you've somehow managed to avoid the umpteen prior retellings of this story, Charlie Says won't provide truly fresh insight, or any other reason to mine the Manson mess yet again...

| Oct 15, 2020

Mary Harron and writer Guinevere Turner choose a more story-focused, meditative approach on the deprivation of these three women... the film is all the better for it.

| Sep 30, 2020

Director Mary Haron has found a surprisingly relevant way to revisit the grisly events: Through the eyes of the women Manson somehow hypnotized into carrying out the slaughter.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 29, 2020

Working with material that could have easily been sensationalized or exploited, Mary Harron manages to infuse dignity into a work whose story and certainly toxic characters don't deserve any.

| Feb 11, 2020

[T]he filmmakers never fully convey the fervor that led the Manson women astray, as Peter Jackson did with his similarly true-crime "Heavenly Creatures."

| Feb 7, 2020

For all its strengths as a film, we still don't know any more after watching Charlie Says than we did before.

| Jan 18, 2020

Charlie Says makes a strong case for an even grayer area: That perhaps these women can be victims and guilty of horrific, unpardonable crimes. It's an unsettling thought. But at least, unlike the exaltation of Ted Bundy's abundant charm, it's a new one.

| Oct 23, 2019

Charlie Says is a film about female solidarity in even the harshest circumstances, rather than yet another take on the Charles Manson story.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 25, 2019

Charlie Says, for all of its noble intentions, has the spirit and nods towards similar territory as Helter Skelter or The Manson Family but, whether due to restraint, interference or whatever, just never quite gets there.

| Sep 3, 2019

Looking at the women looking at Charles Manson, "Charlie Says" is a frustrating watch that never really reveals why they did what they did. Murray and Wever are terrific though, and Harron nails that end-of-decade twisting of idealism and optimism.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 31, 2019

Harron and Turner are making a wider point about the nature of demagoguery and the willingness of people to be led. It's easy to look back with fifty years of hindsight and realise little has changed.

| Original Score: 3 | Jul 29, 2019

The cultural weight of the Manson Family Murders...will always be a tough, almost unexplainable mindset to recreate and explain from both the women and Manson himself, but Harron is adept at turning the tables to present a fresh and feminist perspective.

| Jul 25, 2019

Although uncomfortably lurid in places, the film stops short of the full-on exploitative treatment it could have warranted.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 22, 2019

Harron's film is at its most thoughtful, and its most useful, in moments where it presents itself as an exploration of young women in thrall to a charismatic, deeply egotistical leader who thrives on their willing submission.

| Jul 17, 2019

Charlie Says, for all its contemplative trappings, is no less exploitative than many other Manson films.

| Original Score: 2.75/5 | Jul 16, 2019

While Charlie Says doesn't measure up to Harron's best work, it's nevertheless an intermittently absorbing and unexpected angle from which to try to comprehend this incomprehensibly tragic chapter in American history.

| Original Score: B- | Jun 25, 2019

Charlie Says is a small gem of a film...if you can bear re-visiting the entire horror story. I was reluctant to do so but am glad I did.

| Jun 17, 2019