The Girls

It is the summer of 1969 in Northern California, and 14-year-old Evie Boyd is bored and lonely. Ignored by her recently divorced parents and alienated from her friend Connie, Evie is intrigued by a trio of hippie girls she spots in a local park, studying them "with a shameless, blatant gape." Their dirty smock dresses, long uncombed hair, and careless independent manner are so different from Evie's own neat and tidy childish world, and she longs to be accepted by them, especially by cool, otherworldly Suzanne. Edie starts small, offering to shoplift toilet paper and then stealing money from her preoccupied mother to impress Suzanne and Russell, the girls' charismatic leader. Before long, she is hanging out at the group's rundown communal ranch in the hills, feeling for the first time that she's part of a family—even though this "family" happens to be a cult that will soon be making headlines in the most horrific way.