X
- 2019
- R
- Netflix
- 1 h 50 m
- 2019
- R
- Netflix
- 1 h 50 m
Summary A chronicle of the crimes of Ted Bundy (Zac Efron) from the perspective of Liz (Lily Collins), his longtime girlfriend, who refused to believe the truth about him for years.
Directed By: Joe Berlinger
Written By: Elizabeth Kendall, Michael Werwie
- 2019
- R
- Netflix
- 1 h 50 m
- 2019
- R
- Netflix
- 1 h 50 m
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
52
6.8
Where to Watch
Summary A chronicle of the crimes of Ted Bundy (Zac Efron) from the perspective of Liz (Lily Collins), his longtime girlfriend, who refused to believe the truth about him for years.
Directed By: Joe Berlinger
Written By: Elizabeth Kendall, Michael Werwie
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 31 Critic Reviews
52
29% Positive
9 Reviews
9 Reviews
58% Mixed
18 Reviews
18 Reviews
13% Negative
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 31 Critic Reviews
52
29% Positive
9 Reviews
9 Reviews
58% Mixed
18 Reviews
18 Reviews
13% Negative
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
In my judgment, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is an honestly unsettling and authentic inquiry into the question of who Ted Bundy was, how he operated, what his capture and trial and ongoing infamy has meant, and what, if anything, his existence tells us about our individual relationship to toxic evil.
What makes it more than a slick impersonation of sociopathy, though, is the layers he peels — Bundy’s desperation, his endless calculations and longing for connection. He also has some great interplay with John Malkovich, as the Tallahassee judge who engages in a sort of folksy, combative back-and-forth with him in court that nearly verges on buddy comedy.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 131 User Ratings
6.8
60% Positive
79 Ratings
79 Ratings
34% Mixed
44 Ratings
44 Ratings
6% Negative
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 131 User Ratings
6.8
60% Positive
79 Ratings
79 Ratings
34% Mixed
44 Ratings
44 Ratings
6% Negative
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
It's a very detailed accurate and intriguing move highly recommend. Perfect for a rainy night with your GF or BF
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i saw this a few months ago and had to come back to write a review because it just stuck with me. Zac Effron did an amazing job as Ted Bundy, he was very charming, i would have liked to see him take on more of the crazy creepy side, but aside from that, between his portrayal and the incredible story, it was very good. Unbelievable is a better word, until the end when they show actual footage of Bundy acting as his own lawyer (he almost won the case for himself, except the evidence was so strong).
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Extremely Wicked wobbles between its two best, but unfortunately, contrasting features: Efron’s eerily seductive performance, and the psychological experience of loving a camouflaged monster.
Dramatically speaking, it’s a failed thought experiment—you get, watching it, why no one has really told this kind of story in this way. But it’s still hard not to admire the film’s perversely un-perverse strategy, its good-faith attempt to do something more than simply trot out the awful, salacious details.
Some have argued that the film glorifies its subject. It doesn’t, really. But it doesn’t explain him, either. And that leads to another question, which is, if there’s nothing really new to say about Ted Bundy, need we be saying anything?
Working ostensibly from the viewpoint of Bundy’s longtime girlfriend, Liz Kendall (an excellent Lily Collins), [Director] Berlinger never fully commits. Instead, he appears as seduced by Bundy as virtually everyone else in the movie.
Berlinger’s latest film attempts to reckon with the legacy of a brutal murderer who cynically cultivated his public image to make himself seem more alluring, but the story fails to dig in to the horrifying implications of how Bundy was able to succeed.
It was good movie based on real actual things, but I expected it more focus on the Ten Bundy, but this is more about (in my opinion) his wife's struggles and how many women didn't believe what he is at first. What I disliked is that they focused more on that but almost didn't show the harsh side of what happened and all the bad things Bundy did, and felt a bit mellowed down on that.
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An interesting approach to the story, but the tone is poorly managed
Directed by Joe Berlinger immediately after he completed work on Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is worth seeing for Zac Efron's performance if nothing else, but is a strangely muted affair. Telling the story of 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, what begins as an intriguing insider's look at living with a killer 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 Liz Kendall (Lily Collins) first met in a Seattle bar, with the duo quickly falling in love. However, six years later, when he is stopped in Utah for a minor traffic violation, he finds himself accused of a series of murders across California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado. Meanwhile, 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), and written by Michael Werwie, one of the biggest appeals of the movie is the casting of Zac Efron as Bundy. And it has to be said, he's excellent. Especially if you watch the film after the docu-series, you'll pick up on the depth of the performance; his every movement and gesture, the way he smiles, the way he stands, the tone of his voice, everything is perfect.
One of the film's most notable components is that, apart from one brief scene near the end, there is no depiction of violence, attempting to present Bundy not with the 20/20 hindsight of history, but with the same degree of ambiguity with which Liz would have viewed him. Instead of the nature of his crimes, 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 – just like Liz, he wanted them to be seduced by evil.
However, 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, as the film's Bundy is a lovable rogue who bites his thumb at the system, not a murderer, a man who **** and butchered a 12-year-old child.
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, for example. Additionally, the focus shift 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, and drinking, 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 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.
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is by no means a bad film. But it could have been so much better. It 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 him, 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.
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Very little perspective from the girlfriend of Bundy, who had very few lines, and no new perspectives on the character of Bundy. Efron, at best, occasionally portrays a character in the grips of a manic episode, but the movie totally fails to convey anything extremely wicked, shockingly evil, or vile about the character which ultimately should have made Liz's perspective a compelling and complex experience.
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Extremely boring, bland and overacted. Joe did a great job on detailing Bundy in his documentary film, but failed miserably in this drab Lifetime PG rated mess. Wasted talent with some great actors as he hammers home Bundy's manipulation of the legal system. The acting is stiffer than the victims and although you don't need graphic violence to drive the point home, this piece of garbage isn't worth wasting your time on.
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Awards
Mammoth Film Festival
• 2 Wins & 2 Nominations
People's Choice Awards, USA
• 2 Nominations
Atlanta Film Festival
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
