‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’ is Zac Efron’s Best Performance to Date

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile—which debuts on Netflix and in select theaters on May 3 after a Sundance premiere—is, in theory, a Ted Bundy biopic from the perspective of Bundy’s girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer (sometimes known by her pseudonym, Liz Kendall). In practice, it’s a general, emotionally-distant overview of the trials of a serial killer who, after years of denial, eventually confessed to killing 30 women between 1974 and 1978.

Zac Efron stars as Bundy, and as other critics have already said, he delivers an exemplary performance—the best performance of Efron’s career yet, I would argue. (My coworkers argue back in favor of High School Musical 2, Baywatch, Neighbors 2, and Liberal Arts, but I stand by my statement.) Yet the fact that Efron, who also produced, gets top billing over Lilly Collins, who plays Kloepfer, should tell you up front that Extremely Wicked quickly loses sight of its supposed point of view. This is not to say that Kloepfer’s version is the only story worth telling here—and certainly, the scenes with Efron as Bundy are the highlight—but without a strong commitment to either character, the film lacks an emotional tether.

Directed by Joe Berlinger, who put out another Bundy project for Netflix in January, the docuseries Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes—the film begins with Kloepfer visiting Bundy in prison. From there we flash back to where the couple first met, at a Seattle college bar in 1969. Anyone who’s read up on Bundy knows the killer was notorious for his charm and good looks, and Efron’s all-in on charisma as he and Collins dance to “Crimson and Clover.” He peppers it with a hint of menace—just enough to make you uneasy, but not enough for you to internally scream at Kloepfer when she takes Bundy home and introduces him to her one-year-old daughter. He spends the night and cooks them breakfast in the morning. It’s not hard to see why she’d fall for him.

Then we home-video-montage ahead five years, to 1975. News soundbites tell us that women in the area are going missing. The police are looking for a man in a cast last seen driving a Volkswagen bug, and someone gives the police Bundy’s name. At this point, Kloepfer’s arc gradually gets pushed to the side in favor of Bundy’s escalating trials, jailings, sentences, escapes, and rising fame. Individually, most of those scenes work. John Malkovich as the somber presiding Judge Edward D. Cowart adds an extra oomph near the end, and you never once doubt the accuracy of Berlinger’s retelling of these scenes. The director is, after all, somewhat of a Bundy expert. For extra assurance, we get real Bundy footage for comparison during the credits. (It’s spot-on.)

There are still moments with Kloepfer throughout. She drinks heavily to cope and does, eventually, break up with Bundy and starts dating a coworker, Jerry (Haley Joel Osment) instead. But none seem to capture anything essentially about who she is as a person—at least, not until Kloepfer and Bundy’s riveting final scene, which was the first time I truly felt I was in her head. Had the rest of the film carried that point of view, maybe it would have clicked for me. As is, it felt like a well-acted, well-produced but ultimately clinical reenactment of Bundy’s trials. And do we really need more Ted Bundy reenactments? My feeling is no, but given the rabid hunger for true-crime these days, I suspect Netflix audiences will prove me wrong.

Stream Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile on Netflix