Emotionally Dense, Surprisingly Impactful and Horrifying

For months I have been seeing advertisements and commercials for the new movie about Ted Bundy, “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile”. I have a passion for watching crime shows and movies, especially on my Netflix account that I use almost daily. So, naturally I have been counting down the days until this movie came out on Netflix. The day after it’s release, I began to watch it while I redid my bedroom and in this post I am going to explore my thoughts on the movie in how it made me feel, how the advertisements for the movie reflected the final product, and why this controversial movie was made the way it was in the current political climate.

While I actively enjoy watching and reading true crime related things, each one that I take on still continues to add more and more caution to my life. This movie, for example, went in to detail about Ted Bundy’s life and how “normal” it all seemed despite him being capable of murdering over 30 young women and injuring many others. Bundy is shown in the first part of the movie in the light that he liked to paint himself in throughout the majority of his case: innocent, put together, and caring. He is shown raising his girlfriend’s child with her, studying hard for law school, and being swindled by police for a simple speeding ticket. However, as the movie goes on, the viewer begins to see how really, Bundy was not as normal as he seemed. He begins acting more defensive and persuasive toward the public as to sweet talk them into believing he was too kind to commit any horrendous crimes, eventually leading up to his confessing the many, many murders in the end and even showing some parts of one of them. This strikes new fear in me despite knowing about it already because seeing actors and the real people talk about the events makes it even more real. Already I have begun to be more cautious when walking by myself, even just to take out my trash on the street, because this movie is making me recognize how you really can’t know what anyone is thinking or doing behind closed doors. I think that this is positive, though, because I do need to be more careful in my safety and being confronted with such a terrifying story has inspired me to do so. I never want to be in the position where my parents don’t know where my body is or how I died or why I fell for such a stupid trap because I have been killed like this.

I think that the advertisements for this movie accurately showed what the movie was like, I did not expect it to be a comedy and it turn out to be a drama or anything like that. In ads for it, the most common shot I saw was one of Zac Efron, the actor playing Ted Bundy, looking up and smirking at the camera, copying the exact same angle and action that Ted Bundy had done in a clip back when the trial was taking place back in the 70’s. This clip helped show the romanticized side of this violent man that is very much shown throughout the movie by referencing how dreamy young women of the time found him to be. This “dreamy” persona is what helped Bundy murder over 30 women without a huge amount of difficulty. That shot also appeals to older generations who may recognize it from the news from when they were young and watching this case as it happened, and to younger generations by using Zac Efron, a former teen actor that most of my generation recognize him from the hit movie “High School Musical.”

I felt like I saw a lot of articles on the controversy of this article in the months leading up to it by critics saying that it would romanticize Ted Bundy too much. I think that the final product, though, did not live up to that expectation. Instead, I think the use of showing the fantizations of young people from that time with Bundy helped bring awareness to serious situations like this one. Apart from making sure Bundy wasn’t praised for his “work”, I also thinkt hat the producers the a good job of making sure to not show any muder/rape/assault scenes apart from the one at the end. This made it to where the direct actions of murder were not rreally being acknowledged with any sort of praise or fascination, something that I think that iuor already violent society would not reflect well.

Overall, I was very pleased with the end version of this movie and it will definitely be one that I rewatch a couple times. I am glad this assignment helped me look deeper into how this movie really affected me and how I plan to go about my daily routine and how I would react if this ever happened to me (knock on wood that it won’t).