The first trailer for Joe Berlinger's new Ted Bundy comedy (?) was released today. The Voltage Pictures film is called Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. And all I can say is if the movie is anything like this trailer we're going to have some problems.
It stars Zac Efron as Bundy and Lilly Collins as his former-fiancé Liz Kloepfer. The movie is supposedly told from Liz's perspective. That may be why this trailer comes across as so, um, sexy? In the trailer, Efron's Bundy rips off blouses like he's in an extended Brazzers film. He sensually chops carrots, gives smoldering winks, and looks good in those cable-knit sweaters. He also, of course, murders 36-136 women. Damn, daddy?
The music is jaunty and fun, there's sex and one-liners. Annnnd, there's murder. Except all of this together feels like Efron's normal fare—easy-going cocky douchebaggery a la Neighbors. The murder doesn't even seem relevant.
Ted Bundy was one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. He terrorized young women in Seattle, Utah, Colorado, and Florida. And those are just the murders he was caught for. Before his execution, he hinted that the real number of his victims could be in the hundreds.
Suffice it to say, Ted Bundy was a bad guy. Last October, I wrote about him stalking women around Northgate Mall. It's been 30 years since he was executed and he hasn't left the mainstream. Netflix just dropped a series called Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. And now we've got this new movie with a title that's too fucking long to type again. But from this trailer, it feels like the Ted Bundyness—the slimy woman-hater who slithered into University District basements and sodomized corpses, who used large swaths of the Cascades as a mass grave—is going to be turned into a hot action-comedy.
Look, I don't know anything about the actual film—we only have a teaser trailer after all—but I'm probably right. That's no good. All I know is, there's a shot in the trailer from the Florida State Penitentiary after Bundy was finally captured and the camera lingers coyly over Efron's (admittedly impressive) abs. He was imprisoned after killing his last victim, a 12-year-old girl.
Keep your sexy Ted Bundy movie, we don't need it!