Somewhat curiously, 2019 has become the year of Ted Bundy, thirty years since his death. America’s most notorious serial killer has already been the focus of a four-part Netflix documentary, Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, based on more than 100 hours of audio interviews conducted with Bundy after he was imprisoned. Now comes a feature film, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, starring Zac Efron as the murderer.
A month leading up to filming, I didn’t sleep at all. I never felt unsafe. I just felt quite unsettled
Yes, that’s the wholesome, blue-eyed Efron, erstwhile star of the High School Musical series and The Greatest Showman. As anyone who has already seen the real Bundy in the Netflix doc can attest, it is masterful casting.
Handsome, charismatic, popular even in the Mormon Church, Bundy was capable of hiding in plain sight. “That was my interest in the Bundy story,” explains Extremely Wicked… director Joe Berlinger. “He explodes all of our stereotypes of what a serial killer is.”
Extremely Wicked review: Zac Efron could get away with murder as serial killer Ted Bundy but his victims remain unheard in new film
Berlinger is something of a pioneer in true-crime cinema. His landmark Paradise Lost trilogy documented the case of a trio of men wrongfully convicted for the 1993 murders of three boys in Arkansas. He was also responsible for the Netflix Bundy doc.
Bundy, who died in the electric chair in 1989, is no longer the headline news he once was. But, says Berlinger, “I felt it was time to tell this story to a new generation. Many of us curate an idealised version of our lives on social media, but taken to a nefarious extreme, there are people who pretend to be one thing when they’re not.”
Certainly, 31-year-old Efron, who was just 15 months old when Bundy was executed, had been only dimly aware of his case. “I knew his name was evil,” he shrugs. His co-star Lily Collins, 30, concurs. “I definitely didn’t know the ins and outs of all he had done.” She plays Elizabeth Kloepfer, Bundy’s girlfriend for seven years, who was oblivious to the killing spree that took him from west coast to east.
The film is based on Kloepfer’s account, The Phantom Prince (written under the name Liz Kendall). Like Efron, Collins is hardly known for her hard-hitting films (she came to prominence in Snow White tale Mirror Mirror), but the idea of working with Berlinger won her over. “He’s known for freeing the wrongfully accused, but here he frees the victim, which was an interesting twist.”
They’re not two-dimensional monsters, they have a life while killing
While Efron says he was keen to stretch his acting muscles, “I’d never imagined being able to play a serial killer, somebody that’s hacking or slashing or fighting – which this film most certainly doesn’t do.” Indeed, the violence is kept to a minimum, with the film largely skipping over Bundy’s vile acts. “This is from Liz’s perspective,” Efron adds. “It asks whether a psychopath needs that three-dimensional love.”
Collins was disturbed during her preparation for the role. “I had nightmares,” she admits. “A month leading up to filming, every night between 3am and 4am I was woken up by flashes of images of rooms broken down and glass – never any violence, just the aftermath. I didn’t sleep at all for about a month. I never felt unsafe. I just felt quite unsettled.”
Unlike Efron, who had access to all the archive footage that Berlinger had dug up, Collins was forbidden to research the killer. “I didn’t want to see anything [Liz] wouldn’t have seen,” she says. “So my belief could be so strong that he’s innocent.”
Her first real prep came when she met Liz Kendall and her daughter Molly, who showed her and Berlinger photo albums and even love letters that Bundy had written to her. On yellow legal pads was “love letter after love letter… written with such passion”, remarks Berlinger. “You have to be careful with your vocabulary because people think you’re humanising him – but he is a three-dimensional human being and that is the key to understanding how these people operate. They’re not two-dimensional monsters, they have a life while killing.”
By the time he started filming, Efron had already absorbed Bundy’s horrifying crimes – raping and murdering more than 30 college-age women. He says “the most disturbing time” he had on set was just after he and Collins played out a casual love scene. “That was a moment that I think everyone will wonder about: why didn’t Ted do this to Liz?”
Intriguingly, Berlinger compares Bundy’s deception to Michael Jackson’s. In the recent documentary Leaving Neverland, two men discussed their alleged sexual abuse by the singer when they were young. “A lot of people saw Leaving Neverland and criticised those parents – ‘How could you have left your children with him?’ I don’t see it that way at all. The reason they left their kids with Michael Jackson is he behaved a certain way. He engendered trust. That’s what I’m portraying. I’m not interested in how a serial killer kills. I’m interested in how a serial killer lives the other part of his life and deceives people.”
‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’ (15) opens in cinemas and is available on Sky Cinema now