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When Ted Bundy died in an electric wheelchair in Florida, 30 years ago, a witness of execution – a prosecutor in the case of the murder of a 12-year-old girl , Bundy, murdered – told the New York Times: "He probably would have decided to do it, but something happened to him and we still do not know what it was.
Three decades later, we still do not do it, and the aptly named "Extremely wicked, scandalously bad and vile" provides no new answer.
Instead, Joe Berlinger's film, starring Zac Efron, scary, tries with mixed success to address a different problem, namely how Bundy has not only used his beauty and childlike behavior to fool his loved ones, especially his long-time girlfriend, but also managed to seduce some in the media and the public – to the point where, revolting, he had real groupies during his trial for murder.
Berlinger's film, based on Liz Kloepfer's memoir "The Ghost Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy," coincided this year with his own Bundy docs, also on Netflix. It is clear that the feature enjoys the eye of the documentary filmmaker; In fact, it is the frequent excerpts of real footage that give the film some of its most interesting moments and constitute a frightening sequence of credits in which we see Bundy in real scenes that we just watched play.
By telling the story from the perspective of Kloepfer, who for years refused to believe that his handsome law student boyfriend could be a savage murderer, Berlinger must necessarily refrain from portraying Bundy's crimes. in order to perhaps be able to fall under the same fate. she does. We do not witness his disgusting violence before the end of the film.
The problem is that by then, the approach is distracting. We all know what Bundy did – he confessed to about 30 killings just before his death, accusing pornography of his crazy fantasies, and would have committed many more. Yes, Berlinger is interested in telling us more about Bundy the serial seducer than Bundy the serial killer. But we do not learn much about deceit. Except that women might be attracted to a guy who looks, well, to Zac Efron.
Speaking of Efron: The actor, with his ultra-clean "High School Musical" image still etched in our pop culture memoirs, may seem like a counterintuitive choice, but some of his later films in which it is purely absurd and smiling, in the frat house or on the beach, are more apt. The actor is doing a nice career in the dark side here, fulfilling well of a role that could have turned to caricature.
Lily Collins, too, has a sensitive and friendly twist as Liz, that vulnerable single mother who fell in love with Bundy and almost married her. But the actor stealing the spotlight here is John Malkovich, a keen and witty man, as Judge Edward Cowart, who uttered the words "extremely nasty, terribly bad and mean" when describing the crimes for which he had condemned Bundy to death – but was also disturbing, sympathetic, calling him a "brilliant young man" and promising lawyer, and telling him to "take care of you".
At this point, the movie became a drama in the courtroom and we almost forgot about Liz. But it starts with the story of a lonely young woman meeting a naughty guy in a bar. She thinks he might run away when he has a young daughter, but he stays and prepares breakfast.
Meanwhile, reports report terrible crimes. We switch between sweet and sexy domestic scenes and news sequences that give pause. As events get closer to Bundy, we see him doing not one but two dramatic prison breakouts. Then comes his famous murder trial in front of television cameras. In one of her odd moments, Bundy asks her friend Carole Ann to marry her in the courtroom as she testifies on her behalf.
All these events are fascinating – but they are public archives. Suddenly, our narrative film seems to lose its original purpose and turn into a documentary – polite and absorbing, but does not tell us anything new.
Some have argued that the film glorifies its subject. This is really not the case. But that does not explain it either. And that brings us to another question: if nothing is really new to say about Ted Bundy, should we say something?
"Extremely Evil, Scandalously Evil and Infamous," a Netflix publication, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America "for its disturbing / violent content, sexuality, nudity, and language." Duration: 110 minutes. Two stars out of four.
Definition of MPAA R: Restricted. Under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian.
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Follow Jocelyn Noveck on Twitter at http://www.Twitter.com/JocelynNoveckAP
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