Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile (2019) - Movie Review

In light of certain… takes that have cropped up in regards to Todd Phillip’s Joker, a film we’ll be getting to once it makes it to Aussie cinemas, I want to reiterate something: Films should be allowed to have lead characters that aren’t good people. Narratives about seedier characters, whether they’re born primarily from a writer’s imagination or varyingly based on real-life deplorables, can make for great works of art, let alone film.

It’s all a matter of framing, putting that character in the right context so that their personality and actions are depicted as they really are. I’ve covered films that get this right (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) and films that got it dead wrong (Gotti), and with today’s feature, we have… well, a film that gets it right where it counts.

For a dramatised look at an infamously charismatic POS in Ted Bundy, the casting is essential and that thankfully is solid across the board. Zac Efron’s on-screen infectiousness serves to further highlight just how far he’s come from the start of his career on the Disney assembly line. He hits a Gone Girl-esque sweet spot where he’s interesting enough where benefit of the doubt is at least plausible (not advisable, bear in mind, just plausible), but with enough deadness to make it clear exactly why this is a person that has gone down in American history for all the wrong reasons.

Credit is also due to Lily Collins as Mrs. Bundy Liz Kendall, whose character arc from hopelessly in love to hopelessly in ruins to resolution and clarity is a bit wonky but very well delivered, giving a quite tragic tinge to what’s going on. Kaya Scodelario as Bundy’s girlfriend and Useful Idiot (I’ll forego a lengthy rant at how much I hate the idea behind that label) works as a singularity of the media farce that the trial devolved into.

Jim Parsons works past the idiocy I’ve come to associate with him, thank fuck, Haley Joel Osment as Liz’s anchor during the more tumultuous stretch of the story works nicely, James Hetfield as a police officer works very well in a rather key scene, and John Malkovich as the presiding judge is yet another perfect fit for his endlessly memetic delivery.

Back to the subject of framing, how this film starts out is a bit… headscratching. It goes for a Theory Of Everything approach in showing the main subject through the eyes of their spouse, showing Liz drowning in her own denial before slowly, but surely, realising just how Vile Ted truly is. It’s a novel idea, but it falls apart a bit once the trial really starts to kick into gear, making her trauma feel like an afterthought. Not exactly the best idea when telling the story of a man with a double-digit body count, all of them women.

If it stuck solely with the courtroom side of things, it would’ve turned out a lot more consistent because that’s where the more fascinating aspects of this story really come into fruition: Ted’s sly manipulation of the court and the public, the public fawning over him, and the media circus that only served to make everything that much worse. The first part really lets show just how fucking good Efron is in the role, and the other two really hit home because… well, I’ll just come right out with it: Media and popular interference in legal matters has only gotten worse in recent years.

The public perception of those under the gavel, emphasised by the court of public opinion, shouldn’t really have any sway when it comes to legal matters and yet, for a myriad of different reasons, it always does. Whether it’s social activists wanting to stand up for those who were left behind by the system, or casual observers who simply don’t believe that the person is capable of doing what they’re accused of, both sides of the courthouse door end up containing people with varying influence on how matters are received. It’s so dicey that I’m almost unwilling to even talk about it, but in the context of this film… well, I kinda have to so let’s try and give it a fair shake.

It wants to make a statement about the media coverage of the original trial and the effect it had on the public, but it misses a crucial part of that equation: Its own existence as a result of that effect. Without the heavy media attention, it probably wouldn’t have gained enough public notoriety to be revived as a biopic after all this time. I, Tonya went for a similar angle, but it not only acknowledged its place within that effect, but actively made the audience question their place within it as well. That lack of self-awareness ends up holding back some of the more pointed ideas presented.

But even with that said, the end result still manages to make a sizeable impact, both as a look at Ted Bundy’s machinations with the media and as a depiction of where the legal court and public court intersect. It may be missing one final step to make itself truly incisive, but what it covers over its running time is still quite commendable.