Bonus Round! ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’

Movie night date – 7/05/19. Post date – 11/05/19.

Surprise! I haven’t died! Still in production mode and thoroughly exhausted, but keeping my spirits up. During the final lead up in dress rehearsal in the changing rooms, I heard a fellow cast member talking about a movie they watched that had been on my radar for a while but I hadn’t got around to watching yet. After hearing their reaction, I had to watch it. So I watched it the next day with lunch and from there comes this post. So this is on you, person. You know who you are. The movie in question is ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’, a movie from this year of 2019 directed by Joe Berlinger.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile – 2019 – Joe Berlinger – 108 Mins

For those unaware of what this film is about, it follows the events pertaining to Ted Bundy from the point of view from his ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall. Ted Bundy was a serial killer who killed at least 30 women through seven states of America. If you would like to watch this movie in the order I did, watch ‘Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes’ first. It is directed by the same person and insightful. The point of view of this movie was so starkly contrast to the mentioned documentary on Ted Bundy. Seeing the events through the eyes of an ex- girlfriend is so different from seeing a documentary fuelled along by actual footage and photographs driven along by the people who worked on the case. When talking about it in the changing rooms, the person who recommended it to me admitted to feeling sorry for Ted Bundy. While I could not share the sentiment, I understand why they would think that.

Having seen the documentary first, I can attest that the film did an amazing job of recreating key Ted Bundy footage, especially during imprisoned section of his life. You see in the credits some of those pieces of footage they recreated and Zac Efron did an amazing job as portraying Ted Bundy. I am not a huge fan of his only because nothing he has done has truely spoken to me. I haven’t seen ‘High School Musical’, ’17 Again’, ‘Baywatch’, either of the ‘Neighbours’ movies, or ‘The Greatest Showman’. That last one I will get to eventually when people stop telling me to watch it and hyping it up for me. So if you’re one of those people who rant and tell people they have to watch something so urgently and roast them if they haven’t….ehhhhhhhh fuck off. I don’t do things if you keep telling me to do things. I will not do something if I am forced into it. Part of the reason I don’t have a license yet. Never the less and getting back on track, Zac Efron; a throughly impressive performance! I also can say I was very impressed with Lily Collins who played his ex-girlfriend. I haven’t seen her in anything else either but after a quick Google, I look forward to seeing how she does in the miniseries of ‘Les Misérables’. Not my favourite musical. Change my mind, daughter of Phil Collins. No joke; that is her dad, which is a pretty cool fact Google also told me.

Two other actors I am always happy to see appear on screen in other roles are Jim Parsons and John Malkovich. They were very good small roles and John Malkovich delivered the closing speech that the title is taken from amazingly. The set for the film and costuming were amazingly on point. I like when films shoot in the old style of the time ever since I saw it in ‘X-Men: Days Of Future Past’. While I am aware there are a lot of changes to the film, I will focus on the one that makes me sad. The beginning of the film begins with ‘the end’; that is to say it is Liz the ex-girlfriend visiting Ted in jail not long before he is sentenced to death. It flashes back to when they met and plays out back up to that scene. During that scene, Liz questions Ted about one of the victims who’s head had been removed and not found. The answer is a dark and amazing scene, but in real life did not happen. Liz did not even come to visit Ted Bundy at that time. Instead, he simply called her and while I could not find what exactly he said, he didn’t confess; only gave her a sense of closure. This scene in the movie however I feel was a worthwhile change and worked incredibly well. What a chilling end. Loved it.

Closing Thoughts

A very very solid movie. I like it, but that’s cause I find things like the strange, unexplained, or weird interesting. In a similar vein, I would recommend ‘Evil Genius: The True Story of America’s Most Diabolical Bank Heist’ to anyone interested in crazy stuff similar to Ted Bundy. Anyway, back to the production. The show must go oooooooooonnnnnnn! I will be back in two weeks to do the two Disney movies…I promise…well, will try to promise. You know what I mean. As always:

Hope you’re having a wonderful day and keep smiling.