Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Phoenix Rising’ On HBO, Where Evan Rachel Wood Talks About Her Abusive Relationship With Marilyn Manson

Phoenix Rising is a two-part docuseries, directed by Amy Berg (The Case Against Adnan Syed), where Wood discusses her relationship with Marilyn Manson (real name: Brian Warner) in the most depth she ever has, detailing the physical, emotional and sexual abuse she suffered when during their four-plus year relationship. Until now, Wood hasn’t named the person who assaulted and abused her, though the idea that it was Manson was speculated about for years. Now she’s putting it all on the table. Read on for more.

PHOENIX RISING: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “Los Angeles, 2020.” In a modest house, Evan Rachel Wood is with her friend, artist Illma Gore, looking through Wood’s journal and old photos of her first boyfriend.

The Gist: Wood and her brother Ira David Wood, grew up with three other siblings in a seemingly idyllic household in a suburb of Raleigh; both parents were actors and encouraged their kids to do theater productions from a young age. Both ended up doing movie roles and other higher-profile gigs when they were young. But their house was anything but peaceful; after one too many fights between her parents, she moved with her mother Sara to Los Angeles, leaving Ira and her brothers with their father Ira Sr. in North Carolina.

Despite her increasing profile because of roles in movies like Thirteen, Wood never felt part of the Hollywood social scene, and was admittedly sheltered. She started her relationship with Manson in 2006, when she was 18 and he was 37. She talks about how they met at a party at the Chateau Marmont, but then goes into how emotionally manipulative he was, alienating her from everyone she loved, including her mother. She also details how, during the filming of the video for the song “Heart-Shaped Glasses,” Manson went from simulating sex to actually penetrating her, against her wishes.

We also get a bit of a portrait of Manson himself, with a lot of information coming from his 1999 memoir. He came from an environment of severe abuse and bullying, and instead of getting help, he internalized it and his Manson persona is the product of it, including the examples of his abusive behavior that was more than tolerated by his road crew, record labels and others.

After finding out that the statute of limitations for her case had expired, she and Gore lobbied to get those timeframes increased via a new bill called The Phoenix Act. In the process of testifying about the abuse she survived, without directly naming Manson, other victims of his contacted her, recognizing his patterns. After a lot of compromises, the act was passed, and the pair turned their efforts to listening to other victims of Manson’s and passing their evidence to authorities.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Phoenix Rising can stand with other documentaries about sexual assault, like Nevertheless or Audrie & Daisy. But because Wood is finally coming out and naming Manson in this docuseries, the reaction to this will be a whole lot more explosive.

Our Take: Most of the time, a 3-hour docuseries concentrating on just one person’s side of the story about sexual assault might be considered too biased to be credible — even a series as harrowing as Allen V. Farrow raised some doubtful eyebrows among some.

But, given how many years Wood avoided naming Manson when she talked about her assault and abuse, and given the fact that others have now come forward to give similar stories about him, we were riveted while Wood talked about her relationship with Manson, how he manipulated her, and some of the horrific stuff she went through.

The fascination isn’t about her victimhood, though,  but it’s about what Wood is doing in the aftermath of her relationship. Even during the years when she didn’t name Manson, she worked hard to listen to other survivors and advocate for increased statutes of limitations. She did this in the face of the type of online backlash you wouldn’t wish for anyone, where people pushed her to name her attacker, or victim-blame her for getting into a relationship with Manson to begin with.

What had us really at attention, though, was the last half-hour of Part 1, where Wood and others detailed Manson’s background and how he’s channeled it into an abusive personality that might also be heavily anti-Semitic (Wood was raised Jewish). It shows how someone like Wood can get past a troubled childhood by doing the work needed to break the cycle, and how others can internalize it to the point where the cycle not only continues, but gets worse.

Sex and Skin: Wood’s stories about Manson are hard to listen to, but need to be heard.

Parting Shot: A graphic explains that the producers reached out to Manson and his reps, who declined to participate, but who sent a statement denying every one of Wood’s accusations, as well as the accusations others have leveled against him.

Sleeper Star: Illma Gore is doing a lot of the grunt work with the reports from Manson’s other victims, and she seems to be the one who keeps Wood on task as she at times reads about the red flags of abusive behavior and starts wondering how she fell into that trap.

Most Pilot-y Line: None we could find.

Our Call: STREAM IT. It goes without saying that Evan Rachel Wood’s story is a tough one, and the fact that she’s decided to put it all out there in Phoenix Rising makes the docuseries all the more worth watching.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.