As someone who watches an unhealthy amount of true crime shows with my Netflix subscription and on some of the best streaming services, I like to think I know a thing or two about notorious crimes and criminals like Charles Manson. But even I can be shocked, dismayed, and left scratching my head from time to time, and that very thing happened when I recently sat down to watch Chaos: The Manson Murders.
This 90-plus-minute documentary from Errol Morris, the Academy Award-winning documentarian behind The Fog of War and The Thin Blue Line, doesn’t just dissect the Tate-LaBianca murders or the Manson Family, it also sets out to offer a completely different perspective of the whole ordeal by offering a wild theory on what could have led to it happening. And, I just have to talk about it…
The Theory Involving The CIA, MKUltra, And Charles Manson Is By Far The Most Out There
Much like the book on which it is based, Tom O’Neill and Dan Piepenbring’s CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, the 2025 Netflix documentary explores different theories but keeps coming back to one involving the CIA, the MKUltra program, and the Manson Family. While it’s never stated whether or not Charles Manson was either knowingly or unknowingly part of the CIA’s mind-control program, the documentary does bring up some strange occurrences and coincidences involving it all.
Again, there’s not evidence or definitive proof to back up the theory, but there are times throughout the documentary where it’s alleged that Manson and his followers frequented a clinic in San Francisco that also housed the offices of Dr. Louis “Jolly” West, a psychiatrist who frequently denied rumors that he was involved with the MKUltra program. Another part of the documentary questions why Manson, who was out of prison at the time, was able to violate his parole so many times in the years leading up to the 1969 murders with little to no consequence.
It is also suggested that he picked up the mind control tactics he used to make his followers viciously murder seven people over the course of two days from the program.
I Don't Know If It's True Or Not, But The Documentary Did Offer A Different Interpretation Of The Heinous Crimes
Unlike Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which featured an unnerving Charles Manson scene before changing the course of history with its ending, this new documentary ends with Sharon Tate and many others being brutally killed in one of the most heinous and infamous murders of the 20th century. I’m not fully sure if I believe everything it brings up regarding Manson either having connections with the CIA’s mind-control program or using similar tactics to brainwash his followers, but I did find this radical theory to be quite interesting and engaging.
Sure, Chaos does dive into the whole aspect of the cult leader orchestrating the crimes to incite a race war known as Helter Skelter, and another about Manson not knowing that Terry Melcher, a record producer who he previously worked with, no longer lived there. However, the whole CIA, MKUltra, and mind-control business is all I can think about.
Regardless of how you feel about Charles Manson, true crime, or conspiracy theories, Chaos: The Manson Murders is one of the best documentaries Netflix has put out in some time.
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