Film Review: "My Grandfather Charles Manson" — Nature, Nurture, and a Complicated Legacy

When I was studying psychology in college, I was fascinated by the impact that both nature and nurture play in shaping a person's personality. That interest was top of mind as I watched Hulu's new documentary film, My Grandfather Charles Manson, which chronicles a young woman's discovery that her family tree includes a notorious cult leader and orchestrator of mass murder. Through Sophia and her father Daniel, neither of whom met or knew Manson, audiences get insight into the mental well-being of Manson's biological descendants.

From co-directors Sophia Maddox (the film's own subject) and Alexandra Orton, My Grandfather Charles Manson is an intimate exploration of Sophia grappling with her lineage. Her vulnerability extends to bringing the camera into her personal therapy sessions, where she talks about the girl she was before all of this — empathetic, kind, caring — to the new perception of her now that the story is out there. Through meeting with people who knew her grandfather, Sophia not only reckons with her ancestry but also grapples with what it all means for her.

The more interesting threads of the doc surround Sophia's father, Daniel Arguelles. Despite not knowing the identity of his biological father until 2017, Daniel's youth followed a surprisingly similar trajectory to his father's. As the filmmakers tell Manson's story, parallels are made between father and son — abusive parents who sent their boys away to schools for troubled youth. Sophia's struggles with her genealogy are easier to connect to through her complicated relationship with her father.

Rounding out the film are interviews Sophia conducts with people who knew her grandfather. The holy grail of them all is prosecutor Stephen Kay, and the film documents just how hard he proves to pin down before Sophia lands the interview. Interviewees include some of Manson's friends, members of the "Manson Family," and a few other acquaintances. A meeting with Ed Roach, photographer for The Beach Boys, will also change viewers' wholesome opinions about the band (who have their own doc on the Disney Bundle).

At 1 hour and 46 minutes, My Grandfather Charles Manson drifts at times by pausing the main narrative for lessons about who Charles Manson was. The edit includes splashes of true crime in what's otherwise a personal journey of reckoning with one's complicated ancestry. A casualty of filming the doc in real time is that, by the end of production, there's not much of a resolution to speak of, save for Sophia changing her surname to Maddox (Manson's own birth name, before he became Charles Manson) as her way of reclaiming something from him.

In the end, while Sophia undoubtedly has a better understanding of who Charles Manson was, it's up to a psychologist to reframe the narrative for the audience. Sophia inherited about a quarter of her DNA from an infamous figure, and while there are traces of him in her, we are not our ancestors. Despite similarities in her father's life and a complicated father/daughter dynamic, their biological connection to a monstrous man doesn't make them inherently monstrous. They have that nature, but not that nurture.

I give My Grandfather Charles Manson 2.5 out of 5 stars.

My Grandfather Charles Manson starts streaming July 22nd on Hulu.