Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile

Ted Bundy is one of the most famous American serial killers. In addition to the fact he killed so many women and in such a horrible way, he was one of those criminals who became pop-culture icons. The media was crazy about him, the women were falling in love with him and even after he was convicted, the media circus didn't stop. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (the title comes from the words the judge used to describe Bundy's crimes) takes a very interesting approach to Bundy's story in that it is told with a lot of restraint, not focusing on the nature of the crimes, but instead depicting how Bundy manipulated everyone around him.

The first trailer for the film did it a huge disservice because not only was it quite vulgar considering the gravity of the subject matter, but it was false marketing. This is not a loud, violent film. It's a character study. I see a lot of disappointment and confusion among people who saw the movie about the fact it didn't focus on graphic details of Bundy's crimes. The documentary, also made by Berlinger, was the same - if you were looking for morbid details, you wouldn't find many there. The film doesn't even show Bundy kill anyone, other than in a flashback where he is about to. I think this was a clever approach to take - we all know human imagination conjures things far worse than any movie scenes could and having Jim Parsons' character talk about the details of the crimes in the courtroom was enough.
By taking this approach the movie never fully shows just what a horrific monster Bundy was. Here's the thing - did it have to? Isn't it enough to see the names of his victims in the final frame of the movie? Isn't that enough to call him a despicable monster? It should and it is enough. And in today's world any movie that shows restraint in depicting violence against women should be commended not criticized. This is the wold where women have to put up with so much. This is the world where men have fits of anger and rage over something as normal as a female led superhero movie. I'd say if you were to feature any scenes depicting violence targeting women you better have a good reason for it and telling the story of a killer would be one. But Berlinger shows that you can effectively tell such a story without any scenes depicting the killings. The question people are posing shouldn't be "why didn't it show violence?" it should be "why did it?".In fact it's very disturbing how many people use the fact that we didn't see graphic murders against this movie, claiming it is a flaw. It's not the problem with the movie, it's the problem with the people claiming this is a bad thing.

By taking this approach Berlinger paints a unique portrait of Bundy in the public's eye - the people who followed the case on television didn't see all the crime scenes photos, they knew only of the details revealed in the trial (which was the first televised trial in US history). So if you didn't know much about this story before watching this film, you know what they know. It is only in final minutes when the movie takes the definitive stand in "was he guilty or not?" debate. And all the claims that the movie glamorizes Bundy are preposterous - Efron does resemble Bundy and isn't it always the case that the actors are better looking than the real people they are portraying? Those women on the gallery smiling at him? Those women who believed he must be innocent because he was charming? This all actually happened.
Efron does incredible job imitating Bundy - a lot of the events we see in the film were also featured in the documentary and it's uncanny how similar his mannerisms are. But Efron also manages to insert those little details in his performance that suggest his character is far more sinister than his girlfriend suspects - the fact his eyes linger on her just a bit too long for it to be a normal behavior or how he tries so hard to fit in and how he comes off completely desperate while he tries. Then there are other instances planting the clues that he is not innocent, like him practicing fake smile as he is about to be pulled over by the police.

Of course we know Bundy was guilty but the film doesn't definitely state that until the end and the filmmakers do an amazing job in showing how easy it was to get fooled by him. We only see the glimpse behind the curtain of lies in final scenes when Bundy starts to crack in front of Liz and Efron shows the caged rage and frustration ready to explode and annihilate whatever stands in the way, but this time it's the law enforcement finally stopping him from doing so.
The film does feel like two different movies at times - one showing Bundy's fight to prove his innocence and another focusing on Liz, his girlfriend, whose life is falling apart because of him. It's admirable of Berlinger to decide to focus on this woman and show her tragedy, but there wasn't enough of her story to fill the entire film, while Bundy's courtroom exploits could serve as material for hours of countless movies. It was an interesting approach, though and it works very well in the film's last minutes when Liz remembers all the happy times with Ted and realizes there was something sinister in all of them. Unfortunately, it makes the film feel disjointed and it would have been better if it focused on only one of those perspectives, instead of continuously switching between Liz and Ted.

I thought another interesting approach would be to show the events entirely from the perspective of Carol Anne Boone, a woman who was in love with Bundy and followed him to Florida to help him with the trial and the media's perception of him. The proposal scene actually happened in real life and Boone did have Bundy's child and kept visiting on the death row. It would be interesting to see what happened to her after he was executed but I guess Berlinger wanted to respect her privacy.
The film features wonderful performances - Lily Collins is fantastic as  Liz, Scodelario does an amazing job balancing between obsessed and vulnerable as Carol and John Malkovich, who is seemingly owned by Netflix the way he pops up in their films, is terrific as the judge presiding over the case. Then there is Jim Parsons who never really gets to deliver anything too different from his work in The Big Bang Theory but he always brings charm and charisma and his delivery of "You've gotta be shitting me!" is a wonderfully funny moment.

While Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile feels a bit unfocused at times, it should be commended for the approach that was taken here. It didn't go for the easy way, it didn't show brutality and gore, which would no doubt attract a lot of attention to the film and Efron's performance. Instead it focused on telling the story and exploring the facade that protected the monster and drew so many to him. It's a very original way to tell such a story and hopefully more directors take such a route instead of bombarding us with scenes that belong in torture porn.

74/100 (USA, 2019, 110 min)
Plot: A courtroom frenzy ensues and sweeps 1970s America when a young single mother reluctantly tips the attention of a widespread manhunt toward her longtime boyfriend, Ted Bundy.
Director: Joe Berlinger
Writers: Elizabeth Kendall (based on the book "The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy" by), Michael Werwie
Stars: Lily Collins, Zac Efron, Angela Sarafyan