Evan Rachel Wood Exposes Marilyn Manson’s Nazi House of Horrors in Sundance Doc ‘Phoenix Rising’

In director Amy Berg’s new documentary Phoenix Rising, Evan Rachel Wooden holds Marilyn Manson accountable for the abuse she says she endured throughout their relationship, which started when she was 18 years outdated. However the actress and activist makes clear that she’s not precisely rejoicing about it.

“This isn’t about revenge, or, ‘He’s a monster and he must be punished and destroyed,’” she says within the documentary. “He’s already destroyed. That man isn’t a person anymore; he’s gone.”

Half One of many documentary premiered Sunday on the Sundance Movie Pageant. The second installment is due on HBO later this yr, however the first covers a variety of floor: Evan Rachel Wooden’s upbringing, her rise as an actress and subsequent therapy by the business as a mature “troubled teen” determine, and her alleged grooming and abuse by the hands of the then-37-year-old rock star—who she says terrorized her emotionally and sexually, threatened her life, and started getting swastikas and adorning their residence with Nazi propaganda throughout their relationship regardless of figuring out she is Jewish. Wooden additionally alleges that Manson “primarily raped” her throughout a music video shoot for “Coronary heart-Formed Glasses.”

Manson, who’s dealing with a number of civil lawsuits for sexual assault and is below investigation by the authorities, has denied the abuse claims towards him and says his “intimate relationships have all the time been completely consensual with like-minded companions.”

Extra vital than any lurid particulars about Wooden’s abuse, nevertheless, is the movie’s research of what got here subsequent—the second Wooden felt protected sufficient to return ahead about what had occurred to her and subsequently started advocating to broaden California’s statute of limitations for when home abuse survivors can press prices towards their abusers to past three years.

Berg’s documentary unfolds by way of interviews with Wooden, her household, and fellow activists—all dropped at life alongside archival footage and Alice in Wonderland-like illustrations. Wooden reads from a journal she saved for years beginning on the age of 15. She remembers rising up feeling alone and invisible. “I didn’t know the place to go,” she says, “so I used to be the proper candidate for any person to pop up and say, ‘Include me.’”

Wooden says she and Manson, born Brian Warner, met in 2006 at a Chateau Marmont social gathering the place at first she mistook him for a Manson wannabe. She remembers he acknowledged her from her work in 13—then a cornerstone of the actress’ Lolita picture in Hollywood. (“The business machine… noticed this picture of maturity and ran with it,” Wooden says. “However I used to be nonetheless so younger.”)

Warner allegedly informed Wooden that he needed to work along with her on a movie adaptation of Phantasmagoria and requested for her contact data, after which they started seeing each other—ostensibly to work on the challenge. It was at that time, Wooden says, that the grooming started. Warner started to isolate her from her family and friends, she says; he egged on a rift between her and her boyfriend; forged aspersions on Wooden’s mom by impugning on her conduct as Wooden’s supervisor; and would finally threaten to, in Wooden’s phrases, “fuck up my entire household from the underside up” beginning along with her father.

A placing characteristic of Berg’s work: Wooden’s mom and brother each present interviews in assist of her story, testimony that proves devastating in its empathy. “He has studied this,” says Wooden’s mom, Sara Lynn Moore. “He’s studied the best way to manipulate folks. He’s a predator—he’s a predator.”

Wooden remembers that her first kiss with Warner occurred when she was making ready to depart city. The 2 had been consuming absinthe and he informed her he’d miss her. She couldn’t even end her reply earlier than he “caught his tongue down my throat… The whole lot went white and I simply didn’t know the best way to reply.” The 2 didn’t have intercourse then, she says, however “issues positively escalated on the roof. It ended with him on prime of me after which it was over and I felt actually bizarre and really icky. I wasn’t even actually interested in him.” She says it was the primary time that she’d kissed an grownup man in her private life.

Wooden remembers that Warner’s proclamations of affection rapidly grew to become unnerving—missives like “fairly the muse, you brat” and “you’re so vital to me I wish to kick you.” (Definitions for phrases like “grooming” and “love bombing” seem on display in moments like these.)

Throughout their relationship, Warner additionally started to specific a heightened curiosity in Nazism and mass psychology, Wooden says—regardless of the actual fact she is Jewish. She remembers his insistence that Adolf Hitler was “the primary rock star as a result of Hitler was trendy, he was properly spoken, and he knew the best way to manipulate the plenty.” He was obsessive about Nazi paraphernalia and imagery, she says, and made enjoyable of her when it made her upset. At one level, she remembers, the phrases “Kill All of the Jews” hung over their mattress. “At what level are you doing a commentary,” she wonders aloud, “and at what level are you only a Nazi?”

Wooden additionally particulars how scarification and branding grew to become part of their bond after they carved initials into each other, in her case an “M” subsequent to her vagina “to point out him that I belonged to him.”

Maybe essentially the most gut-wrenching second in Phoenix Rising comes when Wooden and her mom deal with Warner’s “Coronary heart-Formed Glasses” music video. “I didn’t need her to do it,” Moore says. “No one needed her to do it. However I believe she felt prefer it was true romance—it was cool and it was edgy and he or she actually… needed to do it.”

Wooden remembers that Warner railroaded her into a number of specific situations the 2 had not beforehand mentioned in the course of the video shoot, which she describes as traumatizing. The 2 had mentioned a simulated intercourse scene, she mentioned, however as soon as the cameras started rolling “he began penetrating me for actual; I had by no means agreed to that… Nobody was taking care of me.” It was the primary time, she says, that Warner dedicated against the law towards her—and it was “only the start of the violence that might maintain escalating over the course of the connection.”

One other harrowing incident allegedly occurred whereas Wooden accompanied Warner on tour; he was excessive on Vicodin and grabbed her by the arm, dragging her right into a resort in entrance of his crew. As she watched Warner destroy their room, Wooden says she silently pleaded with a crew member whom she’d labored with earlier than to not depart them alone. “I bear in mind him beginning to slowly shut the door,” she says. “That’s once I knew I wasn’t protected.”

As a lot accountability as Phoenix Rising understandably locations on Warner’s shoulders, the movie additionally doesn’t shrink back from confronting the business that enabled him. One of the vital disturbing features of Wooden’s revelations about Warner has all the time been the diploma to which the singer seems to have informed the general public precisely who he was from the start. Berg contains archival footage of a chat present interview through which he detailed a disturbing video challenge known as “Groupie” with Andy Dick, Jon Favreau, and Daryl Hannah—all of whom politely banter alongside.

However Berg’s movie additionally strikes a extra hopeful word: The day after the 2016 presidential election, Wooden determined to return ahead about her expertise. In 2018, she testified for the Sexual Assault Survivors Invoice of Rights—at which level she started listening to from different girls who knew precisely who her abuser was though she didn’t title him. Their tales sounded identical to hers. “It was like discovering out that you simply had dated a serial killer,” Wooden says. Ultimately, Wooden and her fellow activists have been capable of increase the California statute of limitations to a most of 5 years—the primary time within the state’s historical past that the window has been altered.

“It was the primary time that I had felt actually heard,” Wooden says of the second. “Not solely did folks hear our tales, however they mentioned, ‘Yeah we hear you, and one thing does want to vary.’”