CHAOS: The Manson Murders. 2025. USA. Directed by Errol Morris. Courtesy Netflix. 96 min.
Doc Fortnight 2025 comes to a close with the world premiere of Errol Morris’s CHAOS: The Manson Murders, which posits new theories, and discredits old ones, about the notoriously savage slayings. Helter Skelter, Once upon a Time in Hollywood, Charlie Says, The Girls—countless attempts have been made to fictionalize, romanticize, and capitalize on the 1969 killing spree, so much so that from the very start it became almost impossible to separate fact from fantasy about what really happened. Enter Errol Morris, cinema’s greatest epistemologist, a detective manqué who reopened cold cases and speculated on coverups in films like The Thin Blue Line and Wormwood. Here Morris casts doubt on the official story of the Tate-LaBianca murders, spinning a web of conspiracy involving the CIA, LSD, Jack Ruby, the Manson Family, and Vincent Bugliosi.