'Charlie Says' (2018) – Mary Harron.

A robustly rug-faced Matt Smith makes for an increasingly menacing, darkly charismatic Charles Manson in gifted film-maker Mary 'American Psycho' Harron's engrossing dissection of Manson's devastatingly malevolent psychological hold over his murderously indoctrinated 'Family'. The remarkably earnest, sometimes fragile, weirdly sympathetic performances from the sublime cast are vividly drawn, all energetically bringing a full-blooded verisimilitude to this uncommonly blackened chapter of American history. In many ways 'Charlie Says' is a legitimately disturbing horror film, since it deals so unflinchingly with such a well-documented, brutally animalistic, epoch-defining murder spree, and the subsequent annihilation of the perpetrator's souls. Harron's fascinating film is further enlivened by a fabulous score, featuring the luminous works of Randy Holden, The 13th Floor Elevators, and the mighty Love. 'The apocalypse is at hand, and the present world is dying!'