Review of The Family: Inside the Manson Cult

This seriously deranged faux doco about the hideous Manson family killers is peppered with actual photos of the real victims in their heartbreaking stabbed gore. This use of real photos shocked me more than anything and I personally found the genuine police report black and white pic of 8 months pregnant Sharon Tate lying on the floor, all smashed to death particularly distressing. The reenactments are also very gruesome, with repeated scenes of actors stabbing and bashing each other. One scene even has a 3 year old child in an unedited shot where 'Manson' beats and kicks a woman. How this assault looked to the child is horrifying as a 3 year old cannot discern playacting of this brutal magnitude. This doco seems to have a keen eye to explicitly display the atrocity reenactments for maximum gore exposure. Debra Tate, Sharon's sister actually appears and I gasp to think how she dealt with this as a finished product. For a TV movie is contains R Rated violence and would have been a tough sit for anyone involved. The details described in the stabbings are equally pointless as we already know these poor people died in a horrific way but to hear what they said and blood and bone details is simply revolting cruelty to the audience. And unbelievable disrespectful to the real families of the original crime. This is a vulgar exploitive doco with a desire to expose the worst violence imaginable, explicitly re inact it, and show the real crime scene photos....and rub it in your face. Terrible.