‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’ Shows a Ted Bundy He Would Have Liked
By: Chris Barsanti
Tags: Joe Berlinger, Ted Bundy, Movies, Netflix, True Crime

Lily Collins and Zac Efron in ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’ (Netflix)

Of all the serial killers who entered the lexicon of American culture over the past half-century, Ted Bundy, who confessed to over two-dozen murders committed in the 1970s and was executed in 1989, remains something of a standout. The likes of the Zodiac Killer, Jeffrey Dahmer, or Dennis Rader (aka the BTK) have shocked for many reasons, most particularly their depravity and ability to elude capture. Bundy, or at least the legend of him, followed a different trajectory.

The story on Bundy was that, unlike many more obviously socially maladjusted killers, he was able to live a seemingly normal life while simultaneously killing and raping young women. In this version, he utilized his above-average charm and intelligence to disarm his victims and elude capture, much like the kind of charming fictional psychopaths who repel but more attract in popular culture. That image was crafted first by the somewhat breathless press coverage over his 1979 trial (not coincidentally, the first to be nationally televised) and a little later by The Stranger Beside Me, the 1980 account by his onetime co-worker Ann Rule which both cemented his reputation and launched her true-crime writing career. That take on Bundy has been more critiqued of late, with questions being raised about why some in the media fall for this fannish take on a serial rapist and murderer who was, in all likelihood, of only average intelligence and magnetism.

Joe Berlinger’s competently made but fairly infuriating new Netflix movie Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile falls right into the charming-killer version of the Bundy. Having already made a docuseries on Bundy — Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes — to avoid repetition, Berlinger likely wanted to pursue a more unique, targeted angle with his narrative take on Bundy. Extremely Wicked is based on The Phantom Prince, Elizabeth Kendall’s account of her years-long relationship with Bundy, who pursued his crimes while keeping her in the dark. Berlinger’s stated intent was to show how Bundy, played by Zac Efron, could be so attractive that he would be able to get away with these brazenly-conducted crimes for so many years. If that’s the case, he may have succeeded, but at a high cost.

The most notable result of Berlinger’s decision to show us the charming side of Bundy — law student and good boyfriend by day, killer by night — is that at almost no point, excepting for a very brief sequence near the end, do we see him committing any of his many horrific crimes. Instead, the movie follows in vague fashion his relationship with Kendall (an unremarkable Lily Collins) from a swooning meet-cute at a college bar in 1969 to a final jailhouse send-off just before his execution. It’s a muddled dramatization. Years are leaped past and states hopped with abandon. Attention is paid to Bundy’s romantic manipulation, after a first seemingly chaste night together, Kendall wakes up to find an apron-wearing Bundy in her kitchen, making breakfast and cooing over her infant son. Afterwards, though, as he is chased down by law enforcement for disappearances in Washington, Utah, and Colorado, we are not shown quite enough of how he is able to keep the wool pulled over her eyes for all those years.

Kaya Scodelario and Efron

Although Michael Werwie’s script seems to track Kendall’s perspective, it cannot help but also include numerous scenes she is not privy to, from Bundy’s various run-ins with the law and his on-the-side relationship with supergroupie Carol Anne Boone (Kaya Scodelario). Berlinger visually hypes Bundy’s attractiveness to an almost laughable degree, particularly in the scene when Bundy has just escaped from a courthouse and is walking the streets of Aspen while being ostentatiously ogled by every woman who walks past. The argument for all these moments is that they show how Efron’s Bundy uses his wiles to elude capture. But all that they ultimately do is reinforce the charming-killer narrative while disassociating it from any acknowledgement of the cold darkness that lay behind that warm grin.

Particularly frustrating is how the filmmakers treat Bundy’s 1979 Dade County trial. Already a circus before it even began by dint of its media-saturated defendant, the trial was turned into even more of a sideshow by it being the first to be nationally televised, not to mention featuring a judge (played in meticulously oily fashion by John Malkovich) so enamored of Bundy that he seemed on the verge of asking for an autograph. Many of the details from this section are true, including Bundy’s showoff decision to fire his defense team and represent himself. However, the movie itself seems just as entranced by the defendant as the judge or his many wide-eyed female fans in the courtroom.

Efron’s skills at presenting an engaging mixture of wily attractiveness that hints at but falls just shy of extreme self-regard make for the kind of appropriately charming character who could entice women to let their guard down and police to overlook him as a suspect. Unfortunately, Berlinger makes the mistake of showing actual footage of Bundy during the credits. Efron successfully mimicked many of Bundy’s mannerisms, but took his assignment a little too far. The real Bundy came across as obviously preening, not to mention jumpy and not particularly eloquent. Presenting the character closer to how he appeared to seem in reality would have been a more interesting gambit. Showing just how low the bar is for educated white males to come across as charming and intelligent, the movie could have been a damning indictment of a particular strain of criminal privilege.

The ultimate result of all this queasy glamorization is not so much a dramatization, but rather something closer to Bundy fan-fiction.