The Haunting Of Sharon Tate is a controversial horror thriller from 2019 that is based on an alleged premonition the actress had about her own death, but is there any truth to the quote? Sharon Tate had appeared on TV shows like The Man From UNCLE before making her film debut with 1966's Eye Of The Devil, co-starring alongside David Niven and Donald Pleasence. She would meet future husband Roman Polanski making horror-comedy The Fearless Vampire Killers, and the two were soon married.
In August 1969, the heavily pregnant Sharon Tate, her friends Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Jay Sebring were murdered by members of the Manson Family cult. A young man named Steven Parent, who had been visiting caretaker friend William Garretson who lived in the guesthouse on the property, was also slain by the group. The harrowing nature of the crime shocked the world, and many documentaries, books and movies have since explored the events of that night.
One of the most recent was Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, which cast Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate and famously offered a very different outcome of the tragedy, just like director Quentin Tarantino's alternate take on World War 2 in Inglourious Basterds. Another film arrived in 2019 that was met with much less positive reviews, and in some cases, outright scorn. This was The Haunting Of Sharon Tate, which cast Hilary Duff as Tate, who suffers premonitions of her death throughout the movie.
The Haunting Of Sharon Tate was directed by Daniel Farrands, who previously wrote Halloween: The Curse Of Michael Myers and directed acclaimed horror documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy. In making The Haunting Of Sharon Tate, Farrands stated he aimed to make a movie about the crime that focused on the victims, instead of the cult, telling THR "I wanted to do a story that would change the narrative so that the victims would be able to rise up and take their power back, if you will, from their would-be killers." The movie's premise also comes from a supposed quote Sharon Tate gave to Fate Magazine - which covers psychic phenomena - a year before her death.
This Fate Magazine article was titled "Sharon Tate's Preview Of Murder," and the article details an interview journalist Dick Kleiner had with the actress in 1968. When asked if she'd ever had a psychic experience, Tate recalled an event from the year before where she stayed in Jay Sebring's home while he was away. The house previously belonged to a film director named Paul Bern, who had committed suicide there in 1932. According to the interview, Tate awoke to see a strange-looking man - who she later believed to be Bern - prowling around her room like a ghost. She left the bedroom and then saw a figure which she thought was either herself or Sebring tied to the staircase, having been murdered.
The dream continued with Sharon Tate heading downstairs to make herself a drink and pinching herself to confirm she was dreaming. The experience concluded with her going back to bed, passing the body on the staircase and the figure in her room once more. This story was published nearly a year after Sharon Tate's murder, but her sister Debra Tate later personally debunked this story with a 2019 PEOPLE magazine interview while decrying The Haunting Of Sharon Tate's premise, stating “I know for a fact she did not have a premonition — awake or in a dream — that she and Jay would have their throat cut. I checked with all of her living friends. None of her friends had any knowledge of this. Tacky, tacky, tacky.”
The Haunting Of Sharon Tate was met with largely negative reviews, both for its perceived exploitation of the crime and for being a genuinely bad movie that stretched its dubious premise to feature-length. The movie was also nominated for four Razzie Awards in 2020, with Hilary Duff winning for Worst Actress.