Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes

Berlinger arguably could have kept much of the documentary’s archival source material, with its heavy emphasis on Bundy, while reframing the killer’s story as one about the women whose lives he cut short. Instead, he produced a perfectly serviceable Conversations that adds little to the conversation at all.

Ethical questions aside, the series’ dependence on Ted Bundy to tell the truth about Ted Bundy means that it doesn’t really bring much new information to the table.

Ultimately, Conversations with a Killer isn’t primed to make a person’s skin crawl. Unless the viewer is on the younger side and unfamiliar with Bundy, it contains no surprises, either. This isn’t the series’ fault, but a feature of time and entertainment trends.

Winding up with well-worn footage of Bundy’s trial and execution, this docuseries contains nothing that true crime fans haven’t heard before.

There are no narrative twists awaiting us here. No miscarriages of justice straining to be heard. No insights into the complexities of an unfolding case or scandal of corrupt policemen, judges, clergy or politicians. The tapes themselves are the USP here. ... The only truly chilling thing about Conversations With a Killer was how unchilling it was.

Despite the editors’ superb interweaving of personal photos, police evidence, and archival footage of ’70s Seattle, Conversations with a Killer seems largely unaware of its own obliviousness. Just because the series, like Michaud, can’t get to the center of Bundy doesn’t mean that the only potentially interesting storytelling avenue has been obstructed, and therefore there’s nothing a filmmaker can do but say, “People are ultimately unknowable, and Bundy is no exception.”