Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile
**Seen at the 2019 Atlanta Film Festival.**
Joe Berlinger has finally brought his keen, investigative eye back to the world of narrative features, and this much can be said- it works far better here than it did in “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2.” It’s fascinating that the documentarian behind the “Paradise Lost” trilogy and “Brother’s Keeper” would find himself engulfed in the world, and mind, of Ted Bundy within two different projects that are, by coincidence, coming out in the same year, but he has, and Bundy is a compelling subject for him to come at as both a documentary filmmaker, and as a narrative storyteller. I now have to check out his 4-part documentary series on Bundy, so I can see more about one of America’s most notorious serial killers, from a different perspective.
The screenplay by Michael Werwie has a lot of compelling elements in it, especially in how it approaches Bundy through the eyes of Liz, the mother he fell for, and used as a cover for his dark impulses of raping and killing women. People who think the casting of Zac Efron as Bundy is somehow glorifying a monster are missing the point of the film Werwie and Berlinger have made here; Liz, played by Lily Collins as a coiled ball of anxiety, as well as warmth when necessary, is as much a victim of Bundy as any of the women he murdered. He gaslit her in a profound way, and it ruined her sense of identity as he made his way through the court system, first in Utah, then in Colorado, finally in Florida, where he was finally convicted of the murder of two co-eds, and eventually put to death in 1989. By that point, he had another woman (Carole Anne Boone) by his side, all the while he was still trying to reach out to Liz…because he loved her. Seeing Liz’s self-destruction into alcohol was harrowing, and Collins plays it perfectly as she is glued to his televised trial in Florida, holding on to a secret she has felt guilt about for too long.
“Extremely Wicked” is a wickedly entertaining film in a lot of ways- especially as it focuses on the intelligent former law student Bundy, as he gradually takes over his own defense, the film has a deviously dark comedic streak that Efron plays perfectly. He plays Bundy as charming because, as the archival footage that Berlinger shows during the end credits shows, Bundy was charming to an unsettling number of women. Efron is the right casting not just because of what it allows Efron to do in tweaking his image, but in what it allows Berlinger to do in telling the story the way he does. This is about a woman who thought she found a soulmate, and ended up with a psychopath. Not every actor could have made us believe that side of her journey the way Efron has to as Bundy, and his work is excellent.
As entertaining as Berlinger’s film is, though, it also seems to lose focus of not just being Liz’s story, first and foremost (although Collins doesn’t make us forget it in her performance), but it also loses the tone of the movie. That deft line between entertainment and thoughtful, real-world crime drama is not as well toed here as it was in David Fincher’s “Zodiac,” and it unbalances the film, especially when the courtroom antics- and specifically, as Bundy finds himself constantly sparring with Jim Parsons’s prosecutor and John Malkovich’s judge- start to take over as the trial commences. That being said, I can safely say that not only has Berlinger significantly improved as a narrative storyteller in 20 years, but, while it’s not a great rendering of its story, this film helps us get to the dark soul of its subject, and find that what was there was more terrifying than we could imagine.
