Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile (2019)

What a wonderful title for a movie!! Reading it just conjures images of unspeakable horrors and an expectation for a blood spattering time! But ... hang on for a moment, just stop right there! This is no slasher torture porn movie. It is instead a very well made biography of Ted Bundy, one of America's most notorious serial killer in the late 1970's.  To be more specific, he is described in Wikipedia as "an American serial killer, kidnapper, rapist, burglar, and necrophile who assaulted and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970's and possibly earlier"! Indeed, if we read further, the nature of which he committed his killings and the condition of how many of his victims
were discovered totally match the movie title's description. The movie's title is in fact a quote by the judge when passing sentence to Bundy during his murder trial in Florida.

With such a violent background one would have expected the movie to be matching in violence in its depiction of the crimes committed. Refreshingly, this was not the approach taken. Instead the story is told from Ted's girlfriend perspective and mainly from the time he got caught, until the time he was eventually executed. The vile nature of the crimes committed were not described in detail and in fact apart from some abstract images and photos, none of the violence were actually shown. Instead the Ted Bundy portrayed is one of a charismatic good looking guy who easily won the hearts of women. His love with his longtime girlfriend, Liz, seemed genuine and very sweet, a big contrast over the real monster inside.

Performance wise, Zac Efron carried the movie very well as Ted. He not only had the looks, and charm but also manages to convincingly portray the complexity of a serial killer with an external persona that would fool most people. This becomes especially apparent when the movie ended, and showed video and photo clips of the real Ted Bundy in several incidents depicted in the movie, One could hardly tell the difference between the real Ted and the actor Zac!!

The real Ted Bundy on the left, and Zac Efron on the right

My only reservation for the movie is that it failed to portray the true monster that Ted was but instead showed him as the innocent, sweet good looking guy he portrays externally. By not showing the hideous crimes he committed, we find it difficult to believe he could commit them, and at times, even root for his innocence! It also did not offer any insight to why he did the crimes he did, and why he could be so gentle and loving to Liz and her daughter, while committing his crimes as the same time. I guess we will never know as the real Ted held on to his claim of innocence and only finally confessed to 30 murders shortly before his execution.