Extremely Wicked Shockingly Evil and Vile

[peter]

This telling of the awful Ted Bundy story from the perspective of his girlfriend, who for years believed in his innocence, takes the deliberate step of presenting Bundy in an almost sympathetic light, before finally revealing him in all his awful savagery. I was a little confused by this at first, before realising it's necessity if the makers were to convincingly convey the killers ability to charm to the point of delusion all those who came into contact with him. Bundy's girlfriend and then later the woman who he married during his trial and who bore his daughter, both fell under the spell of this narcissistic monster and continued to believe in his innocence long after it had passed it's sell-by date, and it is on this aspect of the story that this film concentrates rather than by delivering a prurient account of his killings.

Zack Efron is banal but effective as the smooth law student who utilizes his charm over the opposite sex to such terrible ends and the cruel disintegration of his longstanding girlfriend in the face of his arrest and trial is admirably delivered by Lillie Collins (daughter of the more famous Phil). Released straight onto Sky Cinema as well as into selected cinemas, the film gets a fair to middling rating on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, but I think it deserves better. Ok, it's not going to win the Oscars or anything, but it's a solid presentation of a horrid crime spree that doesn't take the easy option of gruesome voyereism that might be the more conventional and possibly profitable route in telling such a story.