Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile | Film Review

It is hard to believe it, but at some point in our time, True Crime used to be such a niche market. Only those truly dedicated and weirded out people who wanted to find out more about the darker natures of humanity would focus on it. But it seems like in the last few years – especially since the broadcast of the podcast Serial – more and more people have become fascinated with True Crime to an extent in which it has become mainstream. No longer is it just something where we are able to watch shows like Law & Order, which are ripped from the headlines, and believe that is truth.  No. They seem to be moving into darker, more involved areas of what we can consume. Podcasts and documentaries that will tell you detail-by-detail, step-by-step of what happened, and others that try to make light of what things are out there and can really scare us.  Netflix in particular seems to be capitalizing on these True Crime stories.  And nothing is truer than what they’ve done recently with the release of Conversations with a Serial Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes and now the biopic: Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.

Ted Bundy was an American serial killer who assaulted numerous young women and girls during the 1970s, and possibly earlier. After more than a decade of denials, he confessed to 30 homicides that he committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978. The true number of victims is unknown and possibly higher, but that is not exactly what Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is all about. Instead, director Joe Berlinger’s film revolves around the courtroom frenzy surrounding Ted Bundy in the 1970s and the young single mother that he fell in love with just before his capture, Liz Kendall (Lily Collins). Based on her book – “The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy” – the film heavily focuses on that relationship; specifically how somebody as sadistic as Ted Bundy can walk into somebody else’s life, sweep them off their feet, and treat them as if they are the most important person in the world.

Other movies and mini-series centered on Ted Bundy focus primarily on the murders, his actual actions and the horrific things that he has done. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile wants the audience to first see him as a person. You aren’t front-loaded with a bunch of random plot points to convince you that he is someone to fear or be especially concerned with. They treat it as if you are getting to know him, slyly by using Zac Efron to portray Ted Bundy in a manner that really disarms you, almost endearing him to the audience. When Ted Bundy stands up and says that he’s innocent, he’s so charming and well mannered that it is possible he just might be.

As the film rolls on and he starts to become more and more erratic and intense, Zac Efron is right there portraying those moments in such a genuine manner that it is still easy to forget he is Ted Bundy, notorious serial killer. It’s incredibly well done, and once again proves Efron is far more than his High School Musical roots.

Lily Collins stars as longtime girlfriend Liz Kendall, the girl who was able to see a police sketch of a suspected killer and think that it could have been her boyfriend, Ted Bundy. She plays the character in such a heartfelt manner that you feel for every step of the process she is going through.  You feel for her when she first meets Ted and falls for him, when she starts to suspect him, and even when she starts to come to grips with what kind of role she might have played in giving Ted the kind of life he has.  It is a performance so sad and nuanced that, by the end, it compounds the fact that Lily Collins is a wonderfully multifaceted actor who needs to be in many more things.

The rest of the cast is fantastic. Grace Victoria Cox plays Carol, Ted Bundy’s later wife and the mother of his daughter, and she disappears in the role.  Jeffery Donovan shows up as Bundy’s defense attorney and it’s one of those roles where an actor is so completely in character that you are looking at him thinking “I think that’s Jeffery Donovan, but… is it?” Strong performances continue from Haley Joel Osment, Angela Sarafyan, and even Metallica’s James Hetfield drops by for some obscure reason (I personally was not aware it was him until the film’s credits). Everybody seems to take ownership of everything they are doing here.

Joe Berlinger directs Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, which is ironic as he also directed the Netflix documentary that’s directly based off of Bundy’s life, Conversations with a Serial Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. When you watch these back-to-back, you realize it’s possible that the documentary was Berlinger’s way of figuring out exactly how he wanted to tell this story in movie form.  It follows the same beats, the same ideas, and it focuses on all the same stories that were being told within the documentary. The differences are when it comes to the execution of the movie, it’s done in a way that it’s much more engaging and involving.  Berlinger and his team did a fantastic job of sucking you into the era and making it feel like you were lost in a 1970s thriller.

Let’s lay down some facts, Ted Bundy was a monster and Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile does not waste any time romanticizing him, nor use a heartthrob to convince its viewers of anything to the contrary. What Joe Berlinger, his production team, and his cast do is tell the story of how it is possible for someone like Ted Bundy to exist, and most importantly how someone could fall in love with such a despicable person, much less support them. This is a story of a wolf in sheep’s clothing and it earns its rightful spot in the crown of great Netflix content.