User reviews

As many others have stated, this isn't a film about Ted Bundy on one of his murdering sprees. This is about Bundy himself and how he made his way in the world. Someone said at one point they found themselves rooting for him. I never did, but that's because at my age, it's hard to fool me after all the phonies I've met.

Some people will be disappointed because we didn't get to see all the horror he visited on women, but it was a refreshing change of emphasis here.

To see the young women salivating over him in the courtroom, cheering him on, was both shocking and expected. Real footage was used. I remember women doing that over the Menendez brothers. Part of it is the old takeoff on a Geraldo Show - "Men in Prison and the Women Who Love Them," a phenomenon that happens time and time again. With Bundy, because he was particularly good-looking, it was an even stronger reaction.

Zac Efron is a favorite of mine -he resembles my favorite classic film star, Tyrone Power, and I thought he captured the charm and personality of a whack job really well. Lily Collins is terrific as his girlfriend. Both of these actors are growing into exceptional performers.

In the end "Extremely Wicked" makes a sad statement. Good looks. confidence, and charm will bring you a long way in this world. We've seen it too often. It's time to start looking at people's souls. The external is, after all, only that.

I love the cast but I think if you want to watch the movie dont watch the Ted Bundy tapes 1st. Watch them after then you will like the movie. As I believe it is told mostly from Elizabeth's point of view. I saw the tapes first then the movie. So I kept scrutinizing the whole time or waiting to see scenes that didnt come up here.

Otherwise great work . Zack and Lilly were great as usual.

Yes, the title has been claimed to be a bit 'click-baity.' You're probably thinking you're going to be watching the most hardcore and depraved film ever made. Well... you're not, but that doesn't mean that it's not worth a watch.

It's the - sort of - biography of real life seventies serial killer, Ted Bundy. And, if you're interested in his life then this is definitely going to interest you. Plus it has the - quite bankable - Zac Efron as the titular killer, Bundy and this is where the film starts to draw criticism from some people. They say that, because of Efron's natural good looks and charm, he draws quite a lot of sympathy towards the crazed killer. This may be true, however it's also worth noting that the real life Bundy was also considered attractive and it was his natural charm that allowed him such easy access to his unsuspecting victims, so, in my opinion, the casting is spot on.

In fact, it's Efron that steals the show in his portrayal of the psychopath and this is definitely one for his acting C.V. Now, back to the title again. I've watched other films about Ted Bundy and they were pretty strong stuff, all choosing to show his hideous kills and various crimes. In 'Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile,' unless I'm much mistaken, you don't actually see a single kill. Whereas most other biopics start with the crimes and progress to show Bundy's capture and imprisonment etc, this one pretty much starts off with him getting arrested and the rest is the subsequent trial. Therefore, anyone expecting gore and violence will be sorely let down by the title.

The rest of the cast all play their parts well, including Lily Collins as Bundy's conflicted (main) love interest, plus John Malkovich shows up in the final third as a judge in Bundy's trial. From what I understand the film-makers have done their best to portray the events pretty accurately, even going as far as to recreate photos from Bundy's life and also copy parts of the dialogue from public appearances word for word.

So, as I say, if you're into real life killers and/or Zac Efron then you're in for a real treat here. However, if you're looking for kills and gore then you're not going to find it here.

Even if the main particularity of Ted Bundy is indisputably a disconcerting desire for exceptionally barbaric murders, the movie focuses on an unusual seduction ability thanks to a charismatic eloquence and an extraordinary IQ, and then two women who loved him, Liz Kendall and Carole Anne Boone. Indeed, the film does not really deal with the police investigation and modestly eludes the macabre scenes of crimes, but, on the contrary, it highlights the duality of the monster: an odd mix of a successful womanizer and an accomplished serial killer, of Casanova and Jack the ripper, or an unexpected materialization of Harvey Dent, aka Two-Face, the fictional super-villain appearing in comic books published by DC, a criminal obsessed with duality and the conflict between good and evil.

Thus, although Ted Bundy appears or seems 'lovable' in some of the first scenes, the movie depicts us, during the second half, a pathetic seducer of any individual within his tiny environment (the journalists, the jurors, the judge, the audience, ...), able to arrogantly smile like a politician during an election campaign, and devoid of any respect for the victims. This guy will literally sent chills up your spine. The film sadly ends with an exhaustive list of known victims, and as many bruised families.

Great cast, especially Zac Efron unjustly cataloged with movies for decerebrated teenage girls, and excellently supported by Lily Collins, Kaya Scodelario, Angela Sarafyan. The atmosphere of the 70s is faithfully transcribed, with a neat photography. At last, it's quite unique to observe a serial killer through the eyes of a woman who truly loved him and was absolutely not aware of his dark side until the media coverage of the murders.

Directed by Joe Berlinger immediately after completing work on Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019), Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is worth seeing for Zac Efron's performance, but is a strangely muted affair, neither ghoulish warts-and-all carnage nor restrained psychological treatise. Telling the story of Ted Bundy from the perspective of a woman who was oblivious to his true nature is an interesting narrative choice, and had Berlinger stuck to this format, it could have made for a fascinating film. However, the longer it goes on, the more it seems to revel in Bundy's flamboyance, and what begins as an intriguing insider's look at living with a killer soon shifts into an underwhelming courtroom drama, only returning to its original tone in the final (fictional) scene.

The film begins in 1969, the night Bundy (Efron) and Elizabeth Kendall (Lily Collins) first met in a Seattle bar. As a single mother with a low-paying job, she is surprised to find this charismatic, handsome, and intelligent law student so interested in her, but interested he is, with the duo quickly falling in love. However, six years later, when he is stopped in Utah for a minor traffic violation, the police find ropes, handcuffs, ski mask, leather gloves, and a crowbar in his car, and he is subsequently charged with and convicted of attempted kidnapping. He vehemently protests his innocence to Liz, and although concerned, she accepts his explanations. However, as police departments across California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and Florida start to connect him to a string of recent murders, it becomes harder and harder for Liz to deny there's more to her boyfriend than she ever imagined.

Very loosely based on Liz Kloepfer's memoir, The Phantom Prince: My Life With Ted Bundy (1981), Extremely Wicked was written by Michael Werwie. The hook for the original script was that the audience is unaware the character is Bundy; the film was written as a supposedly fictional story of a young couple whose life is shattered when he is accused of multiple murders, with his real identity only coming as a final act twist. As Berlinger was completing The Ted Bundy Tapes, the script was offered to him, and although he found the twist distasteful, he loved the idea of looking at the Bundy story through the eyes of someone who thought him to be innocent.

One of the biggest appeals of the movie, of course, is the unexpected casting of Zac Efron as Bundy (Efron also serves as executive producer). And it has to be said, he's excellent. Although he doesn't really look like Bundy, he has the mannerisms down to a tee. Especially if you watch the film after the docu-series, you'll really pick up on the depth of the performance; Efron's every movement and gesture, the way he smiles, the way he stands, the tone of his voice, everything is perfect. Of course, Bundy's good looks and charisma were his most formidable weapons as he proved that evil could fester under an attractive façade, and this gives Efron room to manoeuvre, playing every scene in such a way that the subtext is always apparent, although never allowing Bundy's mask to slip. Indeed, it's the absence of any obvious monstrousness in the performance which is so unnerving.

One of the film's most notable components is that, apart from one brief scene near the end, there is no depiction of violence. As Liz's story, the idea is to present Bundy not with the 20/20 hindsight of history, but with the same degree of ambiguity with which she would have viewed him. It's an interesting way into the story and seems a genuine attempt to do something more than simply reproduce the salacious details of the crimes. Of course, if you're making a film about a serial killer which doesn't feature much in the way of serial killing, you're going to need to fill it with something, and in this sense, Berlinger focuses, at least in the first half, on how a killer can lie and manipulate, coming across as completely normal to all who know him. Berlinger has said that the film is about the mechanics of how a person can be "seduced by someone capable of evil", and it was his intention that the audience actually like Bundy, as he wanted them to feel disgust with themselves - just like Liz, he wanted them to be seduced by evil.

However, as admirable as this approach is, the film has a lot of problems. For one thing, because it depicts Bundy not as we now know him but as his contemporaries saw him, it means we only see the performative side, never the monstrous underbelly. Sure, this means that the film avoids exploitation, but in doing so, it could be accused of sanitisation (to be fair, this is something of a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario - show the murders and you're exploiting real-life suffering, don't show them and you're hiding the true nature of his crimes). And granted, portraying him as a possibly innocent man is part of the attempt to explain how Liz could be duped, but all the good intentions in the world don't change the fact that the film's Bundy is a lovable rogue who bites his thumb at the system, not a murderer, a man who raped and butchered a 12-year-old child, and who decapitated multiple women and had sex with their corpses.

I understand that Berlinger wants to depict how Liz could have been blinded by devotion to a man that she thought (correctly, as it turned out) was too good to be true. But the problem is that she herself is never characterised enough for this to work; everything we learn about her is predicated on her relationship with him - there's nothing about her life prior to meeting him, and what we learn about her life after he was convicted is primarily fictional. Additionally, the focus shift halfway through as the film transitions from Liz as subjective focaliser to a more objectively focalised courtroom drama makes very little tonal sense. It's almost as if Berlinger loses interest in Liz when the sensationalist trial begins. This transition reduces Liz to a cycle of watching the trial, crying, doubting his guilt, drinking, watching the trial, crying etc, as she's effectively stripped of what little agency she had in the first half.

Another problem is that we learn nothing new about Bundy himself; there's nothing about his childhood, for example, or how he got away with the murders for so long, whether he really loved Liz, or if he genuinely lacked the ability to feel empathy. Along the same lines, we learn nothing whatsoever about the victims. This was also a problem in the docu-series, but it's far more pronounced here, and because of this, the decision to put the names of his known victims on screen at the end of film is unearned, crass, and meaningless.

The film also makes some strange changes to documented fact, many of which seem designed to make Bundy more sympathetic. For example, there's no mention of the fact that he tried multiple times to pressure Liz into rough sex, particularly choking. Another scene sees him forcibly restrained in his cell whilst a dentist takes impressions of his teeth. In reality, the impressions were taken in a dentist chair, and Bundy quite happily allowed the dentist to work. The film also shows him continuing to try to contact Liz throughout his incarceration. In reality, however, he lost contact with her in the early 80s, and there's no evidence he tried to find her.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is by no means a bad film. But it could have been so much better. The shift from subjective focalisation to court-room drama makes very little sense, and fundamentally undermines what Berlinger seems to have been trying to do. The film initially looks at how evil can hide in plain view, creeping into our lives under the guise of normalcy, but Berlinger allows this theme to recede into the background as he hands the narrative over to Bundy. If this was supposed to be Liz's story, Berlinger takes his eye off the ball badly. And although the film certainly doesn't sympathise with Bundy, and although the decision not to show any of the murders is commendable, the fact is that, yet again, Ted Bundy has become very much the star of his own show.

Notorious serial killer Ted Bundy's story told from the perspective of his long-term girlfriend, which means we see no murders and no dark side to Bundy's affable nature. It works as a demonstration of how many people couldn't believe such a nice guy could be a ruthless killer of young women, but it also feels like something of a whitewash. It's riveting stuff, though, and Efron gives a career best performance to date - which isn't exactly the highest of hurdles, but shows promise for the future.

By now, people know about Ted Bundy and what a monster he was. But people who are saying this movie is boring, I believe they are missing the point. It's not about the Gorey details of his crimes, it's about Bundy's relationship with people and how manipulative he was.

I am a true crime fan and have always considered myself "too smart to fall for such evil", but I have to admit, there were times when I found myself rooting for Ted Bundy and then realized what I was doing. If you let yourself be fully submerged in the movie and toss out any expectations and what you think you know about Ted Bundy, I think you will be pleasantly surprised at what you are able to feel about someone who was a living nightmare. It made me realize why so many women could have actually fallen for Bundy's tricks.

There's something about serial killers that we as an audience find undeniably fascinating. I don't really know what it is, other than putting yourself in a world that 99% of us will never come close to. Ted Bundy's story is among America's most notorious, vile, evil, and wicked. However, the film never dives deep enough to give the audience that type of reaction. And you can make the argument that doing so would be exploitive and off putting, and your more than likely right, but I expected to be more unsettled by Zac Efron's turn as Ted Bundy. The last 20 minutes are really well handled though, especially as Lily Collins' 'Liz Kendall' finally begins to invite us into her psyche, but perhaps all too late. Perhaps a story like this does ultimately work much better in a TV series/Documentary format. - i.e. the Netflix one earlier this year.

6.4/10

First the good. Solid work from the actors, particularly Efron, Parsons and Milkovich. The costuming and set design was spot on, especially the Miami court room.

Now the not so good, there is just too much to unpack with Ted Bundy to cover in 110 minutes. The movie has to gloss over so much material to fit time constraints. We only mildly see Bundy's manipulative skills. We never see the psychopathy. Without more detail and more insight into the crimes, the movie is really just flabby and flaccid.

To me, this movie would have been better served as a mini series so we could see the beginnings and evolution of Bundy and his relationships.

Having been a crime junkie for 20+ years, i was expecting something different: this movie was surprising! Ted Bundy was definitely shown in a much different light & I appreciated the change. Even though he was a monster, he was capable of showing love (or at least PRETENDING) to others; no one is evil all the time.

I do worry, however, that folk may start a huge "where is Carol now?" & invade the privacy of those who would prefer to be left alone..

This was a good movie, & I'll recommend!

Plot - Love, Lies, and Lip Service: The movie's hook is that it's told from the perspective of Bundy's long-time girlfriend, Liz Kendall (played by the always-solid Lily Collins). She's head over heels for this guy, not knowing that her handsome, loving boyfriend is out there doing, well, shockingly evil and vile things. The movie plays with the duality of Bundy's life - the charming, all-American boyfriend vs. The cold-blooded killer - and it's fascinating to see how he managed to keep his two worlds from colliding for so long. It's less about the gruesome details of his crimes and more about the psychological manipulation and deception that left so many people, including Liz, in the dark.

Performances - Efron Sheds His Disney Skin: Let's talk about Zac Efron, shall we? Because, wow, did this guy surprise me. He's magnetic as Bundy - effortlessly charming, with just the right amount of darkness simmering beneath the surface. Efron nails the charisma that made Bundy so terrifyingly effective at luring in his victims, and it's genuinely unnerving how much you can't help but watch him, even when you know exactly what kind of monster he is. It's a big departure from his Disney days, and honestly, he pulls it off with chilling ease. Lily Collins, on the other hand, delivers a grounded performance as Liz, bringing vulnerability and confusion to the role of a woman caught in the ultimate nightmare. Together, they're a compelling (if creepy) duo.

Visuals - Nostalgia with a Dark Twist: The film nails the 1970s vibe, from the grainy film texture to the wardrobe straight out of your parents' old photos. The direction is sleek, almost too sleek for the subject matter, with a glossy finish that contrasts sharply with the grim reality of Bundy's actions. It's like wrapping something rotten in pretty packaging - which, in a way, reflects Bundy's entire persona. The courtroom scenes, where Bundy's charisma is on full display, are particularly well-shot, capturing the media circus that turned a serial killer into a macabre celebrity.

Music - A Playlist for the Delusional Romantic: The soundtrack here is an interesting mix - upbeat, almost romantic at times, which is unsettling given the context. It's like the film is lulling you into the same false sense of security that Bundy's victims must have felt, with cheery tunes playing over scenes that are anything but. It's a clever choice that adds to the eerie atmosphere, making you question everything you're seeing (and hearing). The music choices feel oddly fitting, like a soundtrack for a love story that's gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Themes - The Danger of Charisma: This movie isn't just about a serial killer; it's about how someone so deeply evil could be so shockingly normal on the surface. Bundy's charm is his weapon, and the film does a great job of showing how easily people were fooled by his good looks and smooth-talking ways. It's a fascinating look at the dark side of human nature - how we can be so easily deceived by appearances, and how the facade of normalcy can hide the most terrifying truths. The movie also touches on the media's role in turning Bundy into a twisted kind of celebrity, a theme that's disturbingly relevant even today.

Final Thoughts: Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is a wild ride through the mind of one of history's most infamous killers, seen through the eyes of the people who loved (and were deceived by) him. It's not a perfect film - at times, it feels like it's skimming the surface rather than diving deep into the darkness - but it's a gripping watch nonetheless. Zac Efron's performance is a revelation, and the film's blend of charm and chill makes it a fascinating, if unsettling, experience. Just don't go in expecting a detailed true-crime documentary; this one's more about the psychology of deception than the grisly details.

+:

• Zac Efron is great. Maybe not his best acting so far. But very much a joy to watch.

• Kaya Scodelario. Always a solid job. No surprises here.

• Overall, a very enjoyable movie. Short-lived, well edited and easily digestible.

-:

• Lily Collins and Joel Osment. Not their best. Collins is borderline annoying.

• How the production of this movie makes the same exact mistakes the media did in the late 70s.

Maybe not glorifying but definitely excusing some actions. Deliberately casting Efron, not showing the degree of any of his crimes (just mentioning), the insane "artistic liberties" this movie takes and the story's focus around Bundy himself. If I was a victim's family member, I'd say: "Not cool."

• Lack of subtlety. Not really a candidate for best screenplay.

• On the topic of screenplay, clunky dialogue.

Overall: Reviewing the scenes individually, this movie is kind of boring. But put together (again, credits to editing), it's quite entertaining.

Forgettable, though. But does it's job.

But please, maybe less serial killer flicks in the future (looking at you, Netflix) and shine some light on the victims instead.

6/10.

True crime is a genre fraught with danger and controversy, especially when one is making a fiction based upon the events. Extremely Wicked et cetera is not a great film, but it does one thing right that the bad ones like Dahmer blah blah get horribly wrong. Essentially, it gets the focus right. It could have gone further by showing a little slice of the lives of Bundy's victims, but it allows one victim to speak for them. Namely, Elizabeth Kendall. Not a woman he murdered, mind you, but a woman he manipulated and emotionally abused.

Rather than speak about the relation the film has to how things unfolded in reality, I will talk about how the film is on its own merits. Zac Efron was both well cast and well-directed as Ted Bundy, an individual that I will not waste the words to describe the reality of here. Efron makes the audience understand how an intelligent woman could be drawn in by this individual and why she might feel an attachment. Without that, you would have nothing.

But the most important part of the film is the representation of Elizabeth Kendall, the woman who spent so much time emotionally held hostage by Bundy. She still does, to a certain extent, as she will never know a day without being associated with him. The film represents her as being in a level of denial that one could easily mistake for stupidity, but Lily disabuses us of that notion beautifully. Lily helps us to understand that Bundy knew exactly which buttons to push, and how hard it was for Elizabeth to overcome the effects of said buttons being pushed. And the "oh, come on" moments are present, accounted for, but the great revelatory moment they add up to is worth every moment of wondering how she could not see the signs. One wonders how much input the real Elizabeth had into this film, given that it is credited as being based on her memoir.

One legal commentator has made it clear that Bundy was a loser, citing his inability to get his head around the most elementary concepts of his legal studies. Citing specifically his own statements that he could not get his head around it. One reliable source indicates that his admittance to law school in the first place was more because of his political connections, whatever those were, than his demonstrated academic merit. In any case, as already discussed, Efron plays him very well. You cannot have a great protagonist without a great antagonist, and whether one personally likes Efron's performance or not, one has to admit that the antagonist side brought a good game.

Which brings us to the other important part of this story, the trial. All players in the trial outside of Bundy and the Judge are pretty minor in this depiction. Zac Efron's limitations as an actor are aptly demonstrated in this segment of the film. The authenticity of the depicted Edward Cowart is not something I can comment on. Most specifically, Cowart is depicted here telling Bundy to quit whilst Bundy is ahead in one motion, punctuating it with a warning to note that Cowart never said how far ahead Bundy was. The better-known quotes, including the controversial and very mildly flattering statements made during sentencing, are depicted so well that the real footage shown during the credits is somewhat unsettling. Oh, and boys and girls, if you learn nothing else from Bundy's example, learn that only idiots represent themselves in criminal trials. The previously mentioned commentator who called Bundy an idiot only has to cite one moment in which Bundy wags his finger at Judge Cowart to prove this. If you are silly enough to represent yourself, at least have the sense to treat the Judge like they can do something to drastically alter your life for the worst, because they can. They also know the law well enough to do things in a way that you cannot easily reverse on appeal.

John Malkovich acts rings around Zac Efron, but you have to expect that. He is John Malkovich, after all. Here, he blends his regular Mild Hannibal Lecter act with something concurrent with how Cowart presented himself in the trial, and it is beautiful to watch. Throughout the rest of the film, we have been watching Efron play up the worst aspects of how Bundy revelled in catching the authorities with their pants down and psychologically (or, allegedly, physically and sexually in the case of one of Elizabeth's children) abusing people. Seeing the good guys get lucky once and finally twisting the knife when it happens is part of what makes this worthwhile.

So what makes this a good true crime film, one that allows the audience to feel that they are doing something other than revelling in picking apart the glorified case of a monster? The key is Lily Collins and Elizabeth Kendall. Whether or not Bundy really made that near-to-execution confession to Kendall is not so important here as the depiction of Kendall finding out the hard way that whilst the truth will set you free, it does not have to make you happy. (Hence why Humans are so afraid of it.) People might think Lily Collins' depiction of Elizabeth's shock and horror is exaggerated, but on a purely psychological level, this is probably underselling it. How does one deal with the knowledge that for all this time, they lived with a man who brutally murdered young women for reasons the world will never understand? That one is going to be linked to that man and his crimes in the public's mind for the rest of their days? Even if one does not show the shock as dramatically on the outside as is depicted here, the internal shock would be, if anything, much worse. The way that the film depicts Elizabeth being greeted and comforted in the parking lot after her final confrontation with Ted by her husband and daughter is a perfect spacer to the full stop given by the ending titles and footage from the real world.

Is Extremely Wicked et cetera a perfect film? Far from it. But does it show why the True Crime genre should not be entirely destroyed? Absolutely. Lily Collins earns the film six stars on her own. Zac Efron and John Malkovich add an extra star. Just do not go in expecting to learn anything new outside of a taste of how True Crime should be done, and you will have a worthwhile viewing experience.

A wonderful performance. Of zac effron who play as a serial killer, ted bundy. I enjoyed the movie. And learn a lot more more about ted bundy's life. For me, ted bundy did all the horrible stuff because he was unable to satisfy his wife and make him want to satisfy the girls with violence and he was a guy pretty frustrated. I enjoyed the movie anyway.

Before watching 'Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile' I knew of Ted Bundy, but I didn't know any details or really have any information or knowledge about his crimes or him as a person. I would suggest that the more you know about him, the less you will enjoy this film. Or at least you will have to enjoy it on a different level. For me this film did something I didn't expect it to do - it made me almost like Bundy. And it also (at least from the point of view the film was coming from) made me question his guilt for a large part of the runtime. This was a quite masterfully put together film.

Firstly, the performances are outstanding across the board. This is the best performance I have ever seen from Zac Efron. As a comedic actor he does very little for me, however this film was proof that as a serious actor he can carry a film entirely on his own. Also Lily Collins impressed me immensely once again. She had already blown me away in 'To the Bone', and once again here (admittedly I didn't actually recognise her due to the normal weight she had in this film) she was captivating to watch every time she was on screen. The final scene these two share together is some acting of the highest quality.

This is not a film that is trying to shock you with grisly murders and over the top characters. It is something very different to that indeed. In fact in terms of action there is almost none, however the 110 minute runtime flies by. The pacing is exquisite, mostly because the dialogue is so well written. I'll be honest, this film caught me off guard by how good it was. If you're on the edge about seeing it, please do. You'll be very happy you did.

I'll keep this short and sweet. It's a good movie to watch if you're interested in the story of Ted Bundy. This movie takes a different angle and focuses on his life with his girlfriend and the trial around the murders.

Some factual errors and poor casting decisions hurt the movie in my opinion.

I'm not sure I should mention what facts they got wrong but I'd like to say, John Malkovich played John Malkovich being a judge and not the judge from Ted Buddy's case. It's was quite annoying and distracting.

Otherwise some great scenes and enjoyable.

This film tells the notorious serial killer in the USA.

The story concentrates on his life outside the murders, so there are not scenes that are gory or disturbing. Yet, the film successfully makes you sick from the inside. The performances are great, and I still feel nauseated from the pure evil that is tangentially portrayed.