This is a very difficult review to write. I've started writing this review several times over the last few days, but kept starting over because I got stumped. Things didn't feel right. So I'm just going to jump into this and plow through so that I don't have to spend all week writing this review. For me, talking about Ted Bundy is much different than talking about your average serial killer. And it's much more than him being one of the most notorious serial killers in United States history. I mean, Charles Manson will also be a subject of conversation later this year with Taraninto's new film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," but I'll have a much different angle on that. Ted Bundy is unique to me because my hometown in Utah was a part of his hunting grounds, if that's the right word. In fact, I know a lot of people who either knew or knew of Debra Kent, the teenage girl who was kidnapped by Bundy from Viewmont High School in Bountiful, Utah back in November 1974. So yeah, this gets personal. And I know that I'm not the only one of my friends who has similar connections to Bundy, so I want to make sure that I'm as respectful as I can be to my friends who rightfully want nothing to do with Bundy and think it's awful that he's getting this much attention in 2019.
The rather valid argument here is that Bundy was so egotistical, among many other things, that he probably would've loved that he was getting this much attention. So why in the world are we giving it to him? I certainly don't disagree that the idea of that is quite awful. At the same time, though, I think that there is a lot that can be learned from Ted Bundy's story. But not just that, I think studying the psychology behind serial killers is something that can be very beneficial to society. If I'm making this even a more general statement, studying why criminals do what they do can go a long way to making the world a better place by learning how to prevent crimes, learning how to get criminals the help they need and learning how to best protect innocent people from said criminals. Zeroing back in on Ted Bundy, I think that last point is very key here. Ted Bundy didn't look like or act like your average serial killer. On the inside, he was a monster. He had no soul. But on the outside, he looked nice, charming and attractive. And he did a very good job at blending into society. I think that can go a long way to teaching us to not let our guard down just because someone looks normal. Dangerous criminals don't often look dangerous, which is important remember.
Now if this movie and the documentary back in January were made for the sake of entertainment value or to get money by cashing in on a trend, I would completely agree that said motives would be completely despicable. But that's not the case here. Joe Berlinger directed both this movie and the January documentary titled "Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes" and his goal here is purely educational. At the end of the movie, we hear audio of a quote that I believe comes straight from Bundy himself that says, "Murderers do not come out in the dark with long teeth and saliva dripping off their chin. People don't realize that there are killers among them. People they liked, loved, lived with and admired could the next day turn out to be the most demonic people imaginable." That quote is the theme here that Berlinger is trying to get across with both of these projects. It's a warning tale to society to make sure you be careful about those around you. Even here in Mormonville, Utah, bad things can happen. I know a lot of people who are good at letting their guard down because they think this a perfectly safe place to live. To that I often like to point out that Ted Bundy happened to Utah back in the 70's, so you should never let your guard down.
Driving that point home is the way in which the narrative of this movie is told. This is a very different experience from the documentary. The documentary follows your typical formula by discussing the crimes he committed along with the way he acted in front of others side by side. This movie focuses almost solely on the latter. We don't see Zac Efron, who plays Ted Bundy, committing any murders or kidnapping any girls until one flashback at the end of the movie when he finally confesses. That actually threw me for a loop. I wasn't expecting a narration like that. I knew we were going to focus on the facade that he put on for the rest of the world, but I thought that was going to be intermixed with scenes of kidnapping so that audiences would know right away that this man was a monster who was extremely cunning and manipulative. But nope. Instead this is a movie that follows a romance between him and his girlfriend Liz Kendall, played by Lily Collins, a brief time in Utah with him at Law School, then a whole bunch of courtroom drama and prison escapes, making the second half of this movie feel a lot like the Netflix docuseries "Making a Murderer." We see a whole lot of news stories and accusations of what's been going on, but no scenes of crimes committed and a lot of denial from Bundy.
At first I wasn't sure if I was a big fan of this approach. It took this from what could've been a very dark and disturbing movie about how twisted and messed up Ted Bundy was into a movie that made him look charming and normal and almost instilled doubt into the user. But then as I thought about it, the more I appreciated that take because it put you into the moment and tells the story of Ted Bundy from the viewpoint of Liz Kendall and everyone else around him. In 2019 we look back at this whole saga and everyone agrees that the man is a monster. But in the moment, that wasn't a surefire thing. I mean, when Ted Bundy moved to Utah and became a law student at the University of Utah, he was also baptized as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That used to be a nugget of information that wasn't widely known that I enjoyed sharing with people because my Mom and I have had conversations about him over the years, but the documentary touches on that quite a bit. I also learned from the documentary that when the girl in Salt Lake came out and accused him of attacking her and trying to kidnap her, a lot of people who knew him personally came out in support of his innocence. No way the Ted Bundy they knew could do that.
Then as we get later into the movie, the courtroom drama is really fascinating because it became the first televised trial in the United States. The movie portrays a lot of young girls attending the trail, swooning after Ted Bundy, and a lot of people doing interviews afterwards claiming how he looked like a normal guy who isn't capable of committing the crimes he was accused of. And lest you think that was a work of fiction in the movie, that is 100 percent accurate to how it happened. Bundy eventually confessed to killing all those girls, but not until a few days before he was put to death in 1989, 10 to 15 years after all of this. Police were then able to confirm his confessions by finding a lot of the bodies exactly where Bundy claimed he hid them, doing DNA testing and all of that to confirm the bodies were the same girls. Somewhere around 30 murders were able to be directly connected to Bundy with many others assumed to also be done by Bundy, but no one knew about all of that in the moment. He was able to maintain his composure while using his charm, quick wit and strong intellect to convince a lot of people that he was innocent and that the real killer was still out there. He even acted as his own lawyer in Florida, putting together a solid case for himself.
That's why the casting of Zac Efron as Ted Bundy is a really interesting one. While I look at Zac Efron's face and am not convinced that it's Ted Bundy's face, Efron shares a lot of similar positive qualities with Bundy. He has a lot of charm, good looks and smart wit. He's one of the big heartthrobs of this generation. He's able to get you on his side and root for him, just like Ted Bundy was able to do during his trial. Efron has a lot of charm and charisma. He often smiles and winks at the camera in a subtle way that will melt your heart. But when he does so, it's because he's emulating Bundy. Due to the fact that this trial was a huge public thing that was televised, we have a lot of footage of Bundy, how he acted during the trial and how he approached the media. A lot of those scenes are directly replicated in this movie and they show them in the end credits. And that's when you really buy into how great Efron does in portraying Bundy. In my dark, sick, twisted way, I would've liked to see a bit more dark Efron because when we do get that in the end, that's bone-chilling and thus I kinda wanted to see how great Efron could do being crazy psychotic Efron for long periods of time. The evil look he gave at the end after confessing to Liz makes me think Efron could've nailed that. It would've been interesting to see.
But maybe it's good that we didn't show much of that because there's no need to portray the young girls getting killed. And we certainly don't need to dive deep into the specifics of what he did to them after he killed them. I've read about all that and thus I was hoping that they would avoid that like the plague and I'm glad they did. There's already enough drama surrounding this movie's existence that I can empathize with. No need to dig up old wounds even more by having family members and friends witness Bundy killing these people in a movie. But all of that aside, perhaps a proper wish for me is to hope this opens the door for Efron even more because I would love to see him in more dramatic roles. And on that note, I do have to give praise to the rest of the cast. Lily Collins does an excellent job at portraying his girlfriend, the troubled Liz Kendall who stuck with him a lot longer than she probably should've. I honestly think Lily Collins is a Hollywood treasure and I would love to see her get more roles. We also had Haley Joel Osment come out of hiding to play Liz's new boyfriend while John Malkovich and Jim Parsons made the courtroom drama in the second half of the film rather entertaining. Overall it was a great cast with lots of great acting.
Overall, if you want nothing to do with Ted Bundy and you think it's awful that he got a documentary and a movie in the same year, I don't blame you. You can go ahead and skip this and I won't be upset one bit. But I think that there is a lot that can be learned from Ted Bundy, thus if you're curious to know more about who Bundy was and why he was such a notorious serial killer, I'd highly recommend you check out both of these films as companion pieces. I'd say you should watch the documentary first so that you can get the history and context about Bundy, then watch the movie so that you can experience this unique narrative that drives home the idea that serial killers often don't look like serial killers. They look like normal people living normal lives. The idea that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover is a metaphor that goes both ways. We shouldn't just blindly assume that someone is a good person just because they look and act like one. We should always be careful and vigilant so that we can remain safe. Overall I would say that the documentary is better, which makes sense since director Joe Berlinger's strengths come as a documentarian, but I also think he did a soldi job with this film. I'll give "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile" and 8/10.
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