Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile’ on Netflix, in Which Zac Efron Gets Uber-Creepy as Ted Bundy

The new Netflix movie Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile is a companion piece to the documentary series Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes; both projects share the same director (Joe Berlinger), debuted only a few months apart, and offer different angles on one of history’s most notorious serial killers. Extremely Wicked takes a more personal approach to the Bundy bio, being based on the book The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy, written by his ex-fiancee Elizabeth Kendall. It also marks a return to dramatic features for Berlinger, who helmed Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, but don’t hold that against him; he’s best known as a master documentarian whose work with the late Bruce Sinofsky is essential, especially Brother’s Keeper, the Paradise Lost trilogy and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.

EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL, AND VILE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: He seems like a nice enough guy, doesn’t he? Zac Efron plays Bundy as a winking charmer who effortlessly sweeps Liz Kendall (Lily Collins) off her feet. They meet at a jukebox. They smooch on the bar dance floor. He doesn’t bat an eye when she tells him she has a daughter young enough to still be in a crib. He’s fine with just snuggling that night, clothes on. She wakes up the next morning to find him in the kitchen with the baby; she’s happy in her high chair, while he makes breakfast. He cuts up vegetables with a big knife: chop, chop, chop. It’s 1969.

By 1976, they’re engaged, and she’s still in Seattle while he studies for his law degree in Utah. One night, a cop (James Hetfield of Metallica, in a cameo) pulls him over. He has a duffel bag full of incriminating stuff, including rope, gloves, trash bags and a pry bar. He’s positively ID’ed by a witness, linking him to the murders of college-age women. His picture is in all the newspapers. Out on bail, he returns to Liz, and the gaslighting begins: I didn’t do it. I’m not the type of guy to hurt someone, right? They got the wrong guy. The cops just want to pin this on somebody, and they’re conspiring against me.

He talks Liz into envisioning their future, married in a new house with a dog. At the shelter, the pup she likes apparently smells something yucky about Ted, and starts barking and growling like crazy. Hmm. At home, they have a few drinks and make out as Beethoven plays on the soundtrack, and it’s hard not to think about how much Alex DeLarge loved “Ludwig Van” in A Clockwork Orange.

Ted subsequently does all kinds of stuff that doesn’t make him look guilty at all: He escapes from prison twice. He’s picked up in Florida around the corner from grisly scenes of murder and sexual assault. He acts as his own council, turning the courtroom into a circus as the prosecutor (Jim Parsons) and judge (John Malkovich) try to maintain control. Meanwhile, Liz copes with a big bottle of vodka, trying to ignore Ted’s persistent phone calls. She opens up a little to the nice guy at work (Haley Joel Osment). She once loved a serial killer. Can she get on with her life?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Sure, it brings to mind many period-piece serial-killer bios, mixing Zodiac with Monster. But it also recalls Rescue Dawn, in which Werner Herzog tells the fictionalized story of Dieter Dengler, the same man he profiled in an earlier documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly. It’s a superficial comparison, but how often does a filmmaker direct both doc and drama about the same subject?

Performance Worth Watching: Sure, Efron’s known for High School Musical, Bad Grandpa, Baywatch and other himbo-dreck roles. But his portrayal of Bundy is subtly unnerving, layering the guy’s latent psychopathy beneath a gauze of sincere, affable charisma. Using the riveting Ted Bundy Tapes as a point of comparison, it’s an appropriately disturbing portrayal of a terrifying figure.

Memorable Dialogue: “They don’t teach you this in law school,” quips one of Ted’s many lawyers, employing gross understatement. (Or, you could deploy that mouthful of a title, which is a direct quote from the judge that gave Bundy the death sentence.)

Single Best Shot: The movie is bookended with Liz visiting Ted in prison. In the opening scene, in a dim, harshly lit visitation booth, they sit on opposite sides of the glass. Her brow is deeply furrowed as she considers his face, which we see as a blurry reflection in the glass.

Sex and Skin: Nothing sexy here — not in the least.

Our Take: Notably, Extremely Wicked avoids depicting Ted’s grisly misdeeds at all (outside of a quick glimpse late in the film). That way, it emphasizes character study over shock value, and forces us to consider Liz’s perspective on his duplicitous nature. And Efron is fully committed to playing Bundy as a smooth-talking master of deflection and misdirection, but with something troubling brewing behind his eyes.

Yet the movie rarely inspires more than our moderate interest. The Liz character is supposed to be the emotional hook, but outside of a strong dramatic moment in the final scenes, Collins doesn’t have much to do but brood and hit the bottle. Berlinger is a solid director, but the film is uninspired visually. Bundy’s story is more compellingly told in The Ted Bundy Tapes.

Our Call: STREAM IT, not because it’s a great true-crime bio, but for Efron’s creepy performance.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile on Netflix