With the release of Netflix's new documentary Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes and of the trailer for Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, Ted Bundy and the phenomenon surrounding him has been trending in the media with seemingly polar opposite reactions. Some accuse the docu-series and the film of romanticizing Bundy and glossing over the horror of the acts he committed while others point out that this is exactly the point and that these films are simply showing Bundy the way he was seen at the time of his killings.
Netflix's docuseries repeatedly refers to Bundy as "charming" and "handsome", which is what he was. The thing that so fascinated the world with Bundy in the 1970s when he was killing and in the 1980s when he was eventually executed and what continues to intrigue us 30 years after his execution is that he didn't fit the mold of what society believed serial killers to be. He was a seemingly normal guy who was active in his community and capable of forming what looked to be meaningful relationships. There was nothing in his past that served as a red flag, except for him being raised believing his real mother was his sister. He wasn't a loner or the type of guy you would cross the street to avoid. He was charming and handsome, as the docuseries says, which is what made him so dangerous. His appearance and behavior allowed him to more easily lure women into his trap. The four-part docuseries vividly portrays his ability to appear like a normal, non-threatening man in order to commit his crimes.
More of the criticism has been aimed towards the film after the release of its first official trailer. The trailer displays Zac Efron as Bundy in a romantic relationship with Lily Collins as Liz Kendall (Elizabeth Kloepfer) and helping raise her daughter. Here are the main problems being pointed out about the trailer: it portrays the movie as a love story and the background music makes it seem like an action movie.
Here are the problems with these problems:
The film is supposedly in the perspective of Liz. She obviously didn't know the truth about Ted Bundy or else one can only assume she would've kept herself and her young daughter away from him. In her eyes at the time, Bundy was that handsome, charming man everyone saw him as. She didn't know what he really was, so it makes sense for a movie in her perspective to seem more like a romance at first. She was in love with the man she saw, not the man he really was.
As for the background music to the trailer, it does seem like an odd choice. I'm not sure it matches the tone of the movie or the real story, so I accept the criticisms of this as seemingly downplaying the seriousness of the crimes and feeling more like they're introducing some Fast and Furious, Mission Impossible, Die Hard style hero.
Making big-time Hollywood movies about a man like Ted Bundy is only natural based on our fascination with him, and casting a heartthrob like Zac Efron to portray him does risk romanticizing him. However, from what little is shown in the trailer, the film does not romanticize him. Rather, it shows the truth about him. It shows the man the world thought he was and the man his girlfriend was in love with, but it also shows the man he really was. Unlike previous films that just portray the horror of his acts, this one aims to show how he was able to do it. As long as the truth (he is a notorious serial killer, rapist, and necrophiliac) is displayed, the film will stay far from romanticizing him and his crimes but illustrate how Bundy was able to use his charm and looks to manipulate his victims and remain undetected.
