Years after the shocking murders that made the name Charles Manson synonymous with pure evil, the three women who killed for him -- Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel and Susan Atkins -- remain under the spell of the infamous cult leader. Confined to an isolated cellblock, the trio seem destined to live out the rest of their lives under the delusion that their crimes were part of a cosmic plan, until an empathetic graduate student attempts to rehabilitate them.
"Charlie Says" is ultimately a white wash of the horror committed by the Manson Family--it features the roles of the females in two of our nation's most gruesome and horrifying slaughter of completely innocent people to date which no one will forget--least of all the victims' families. The true facts of the atrocities committed by the Manson Family (including the three women featured in this movie) and historical events are either omitted or not nearly accurate in the movie--the facts and events have been tweaked, whitewashed, slanted to tilt the viewers' feelings towards sympathy for the three Manson women rather than towards legitimately earned feelings of horror, shock, and disgust for the heinous murders they committed. The movie shows Charlie Manson as the leader of these misfit women of the Manson Family supposedly by using mind control but this was not clearly shown as the women did have freedom and were free to leave. So, the power of mind control theme in the movie falls apart here. One is left to think that these women of the Manson Family went from a herd mentality of sociopaths to psychopathic murderers willingly--just following the herd. The movie is not great, by a long shot.