Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019)

This movie is none of those three things. Let me rephrase it for you. Extremely Boring, Shockingly Banal and Dull. You're looking at the biggest waste of time this year on Netflix, at the movies, and anywhere else. Was the world clamoring for a Ted Bundy biopic? Not particularly. Is it an interesting concept for an independent film? Fair enough. What can be done with the facts at hand, and the demented character of Bundy himself? Well, I don't really want to go down that dark and gruesome rabbit hole, but I can guarantee you it would be something much better than this. Joe Berliner took his engrossing documentary and turned it into a narrative farce. Watch the doc, and call it night on Netflix. You would have missed out on nothing. This is a dressed up, over calculated, horrendously acted dramatization of real events. You don't need to see it.

Zac Efron, despite being a total dead-ringer for Ted Bundy did not convince me as a psychopath. The real Bundy was a snot-nosed aristocrat who politicked his way into making people think he couldn't have committed those murders. Efron plays him as some dreamy frat boy. No, all wrong. Even worse is John Malkovich (fulfilling what I gather is a 5-picture deal with Netflix) as Judge Edward Cowart, the man who sentenced Bundy. The real Cowart is a hard-nosed southerner who saw through Bundy's charade, knocked his block off and led him down the path of justice for his crimes. Malkovich plays him as John Malkovich. No acting required. A real paycheck casher, indeed. Lily Collins is fine here, and admittedly tries hard for a character that was written without much thought or care.

You'll notice that less than half of this movie is told from her perspective, while the film was advertised as it was entirely through her POV. The narrative structure is all over the place, and as sloppy as a biopic can possibly get. You have to make a decision in a biopic between telling a true story using the perspective of the real-life character, or tell the story as a faux-documentary as the events played out. You can't do both.

I left having learned nothing I didn't already know about Ted Bundy, and not enjoying myself watching it either. Even if serial killer movies and docs are your thing, this film will let you down.