In what’s surely one of the most morbid and controversy-baiting trends of 2019, Sharon Tate will be depicted in several upcoming films with release dates that fall close to the fiftieth anniversary of her murder at the hands of the Manson Family. While Margot Robbie assumes the part in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Kate Bosworth is set to play the actress in Tate, perhaps the most dubious of the three is The Haunting of Sharon Tate, which sees Hilary Duff in the title role.
The film comes to us from Daniel Farrands, though not before his new feature The Amityville Murders arrives next month. And if you feel there’s something a little iffy about reenacting the night when Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered his whole family as a conventional horror movie, then you probably won’t care much for the new trailer for Sharon Tate, which offers a barrage of sensationalistic imagery while “Helter Skelter” blasts on the soundtrack.
The film is said to offer a “reimagining” of Tate’s final days, taking inspiration from a quote published a year prior in which she recalled having dreams of ghosts haunting her house. Needless to say, the movie is really walking on eggshells here, and coming from the writer of Halloween 4, it comes as little surprise to see that the feature doesn’t have much intention of treading carefully. Naturally, the accusations of exploitation have already hit this one, with Sharon’s sister Debra Tate decrying the project as “tasteless,” despite giving her blessing to Tate and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Nonetheless, The Haunting of Sharon Tate will be hoping to find its audience when it comes out some time early this year, and when it does, you can bet there’ll be backlash.
