HBO
In its second installment, Amy Berg’s Evan Rachel Wooden documentary Phoenix Risingcontinues to strike a fragile steadiness. As with Half One, the revelations that the actress and activist shares about her alleged grooming and abuse by rock singer Marilyn Manson are devastating. Even so, the doc stays a heartening and affirming exploration of the bravery it took for Wooden and her fellow survivors to talk out.
In February of 2021, Evan Rachel Wooden publicly recognized Manson (authorized title Brian Warner) because the abuser she’d described in her gutting 2018 testimony earlier than Congress about surviving sexual assault. The 2 had been in a relationship from 2006 to 2011; after Wooden named Warner as her abuser final 12 months, 4 further ladies got here ahead to accuse the singer of abuse and filed civil lawsuits in opposition to him.
Warner, who stays below investigation by native authorities however has but to face expenses, didn't reply to any particular allegations within the documentary however has denied “any and all claims of sexual assault or abuse of anybody.” He has additionally sued her for defamation.
In Phoenix Rising Half Two, Wooden claims that Warner hacked her emails and surveilled her exercise throughout their relationship—and that he tortured her after she ended their relationship by tying her to a kneeler, hitting her with a Nazi whip, and stunning her physique with a Violet Wand.
However Wooden isn’t the one particular person accusing Warner of ugly remedy in Phoenix Rising. At one level throughout Half Two, we observe a gathering of a number of Warner survivors—all of whom introduced with them terrifying reminiscences of their time with the singer.
Warner’s former assistant, Dan Cleary—who publicly voiced his assist for Wooden and the singer’s different accusers in 2020—was additionally current at that assembly. He recalled Manson forcing him to document the loss of life threats he made towards one in all his girlfriends. An ex of Warner’s recalled being thrown in opposition to a wall as he held a baseball bat and threatened to smash her face with it, all as a result of she’d been making an attempt to get him to select a pair of pants. One other mentioned he fractured her nostril throughout a struggle.
Across the time that Twiggy Ramirez rejoined Warner’s band in 2008, Wooden mentioned, she and Manson moved to a brand new dwelling—and it was there, she mentioned, “the place all of the torture occurred.”
“I received remoted in the home for months and couldn’t go away,” she mentioned. “He began to yell at me on a regular basis and he actually began breaking me down with army techniques. Sleep deprivation, freezing chilly temperatures, protecting me remoted.” She additionally suspects he started including meth to the medication they had been taking.
Wooden recalled mendacity limp as Warner started raping her in her sleep on a number of events. She mentioned she’d typically inform herself, “Simply don’t transfer” till it was over, at which level “he would simply fling my leg and stroll out of the room.”
When Wooden determined she wished to go away Warner, she referred to as her father—whose sister allegedly confirmed up on the home with a pistol to assist her pack her issues whereas Warner was away. Wooden went to stick with her father in North Carolina, however her mom’s cellphone quickly started ringing incessantly; when she lastly answered, Warner instructed her he’d been reducing himself for each time Wooden didn’t reply the cellphone. On one event, because the singer shared in an interview, he referred to as Wooden 158 occasions in in the future.
Family members urged Wooden to get a restraining order, however she apprehensive it might solely make Warner angrier. She returned to Los Angeles to “defuse” the state of affairs, and recollects placing Neosporin on all his cuts. Then, she mentioned, he tied her up and tortured her when she tried to go away—tying her to a kneeler and hitting her with a Nazi whip emblazoned with a swastika. (Wooden is Jewish.)
Warner allegedly hit Wooden repeatedly in the identical place to accentuate the ache. Wooden additionally alleges that he used a Violet Wand—a BDSM intercourse toy that delivers high-voltage electrical present—to shock her welts and genitals, at which level she jerked so arduous that she broke the kneeler in half. Warner then allegedly held Wooden as she cried, lower his hand, and made her drink his blood earlier than consuming hers.
Wooden recollects dissociating in the course of the abuse, after which she and Warner reunited as a pair. Wooden alleges she tried to go away a number of occasions after that, however the singer repeatedly managed to coax her again. When she left to movie Mildred Pierce, Wooden recollects studying she was pregnant; Warner, she mentioned, was continuously forcing her to change contraception and refused to put on a condom. She had an abortion—after which Warner allegedly demanded that she make him dinner.
At this level, Wooden turned suicidal and finally tried to take her personal life. When she wakened she referred to as her mom, who helped her discover a psychological well being facility the place she might safely recuperate. There, Wooden decided that she would use her information of Warner’s manipulation techniques in opposition to him in order that she might go away safely. When she departed to movie The Ides of March, she’d resolved she wouldn’t return—and she or he didn’t.
Since leaving Warner, Wooden has needed to discover ways to handle her PTSD—which manifested in evening terrors, continual ache, and social habits she herself didn’t perceive, like mendacity about issues unnecessarily.
The power of Phoenix Rising is Berg’s option to middle Wooden’s power all through, at the same time as her story grows more and more wrenching. The doc ends, if not on a light-weight word, on one in all hope.
Wooden, who all the time wished to be a mom, now has a toddler—whom she cuddles and dotes on in a number of scenes, together with one through which they mild a menorah collectively on Hanukkah. We sit with Wooden as she prepares to fulfill with the FBI and afterward, as she displays on the assembly. And we witness the fateful second through which she posts the assertion the place she lastly named Warner as her abuser.
“That is the primary time I haven’t been doubted or questioned or shamed,” Wooden says via tears after talking with the FBI. “That is the primary time that somebody was actually listening, and so they had assist there... It’s this sense of being believed.”