Was kind of curious about this. I knew it was about Ted Bundy, and I knew he was played by Zac Efron. I half expected to message someone and mention how impressed I was with Efron’s performance, and how brilliantly he portrayed a psychopath. So, did he portray it well? It’s difficult to tell. Ted Bundy is kind of known for being charming, and using that to entice his victims. The film nails him being charming and likeable, but then doesn’t really show enough of the murders. It’s a Ted Bundy film where he doesn’t do much of the thing he’s best known for. Which is really weird. A lot of the film is about him being arrested and dealing with the court case, whilst protesting his innocence. This didn’t really land for me as the audience knows he’s guilty. We see very little of the Ted Bundy we know, which makes this film a bit weird, bit interesting. It’s the kind of film you watch once, but you don’t need to watch it again. I feel my issue with this film isn’t what the film is, but what it’s not. It’s not an interesting study into his psyche, it’s not stylish enough (it occasionally comes across as a lazy-Fincher), and it’s not brutal enough. At times it’s even kind of dull. It’s a shame as when Ted Bundy does kill people, Efron is great, Efron unleashed is incredibly impressive and brilliant, he just doesn’t show it enough. The rest of the cast is pretty good too, but strange. Never expected to see James Hetfield in a film like this. Same with Haley Joel Osment. John Malkovich is shockingly underused though it has to be said.
I have seen some weird articles about this film, saying that Efron is too good looking to play Bundy and that having Bundy as such a handsome and charming person is dangerous. That’s a weird take, it’s essentially saying this film is dangerous because it teaches you to judge people based on actions rather than appearance. Who’d have thought that “Pretty people can sometimes be assholes” would be a controversial opinion? Conversely, wouldn’t this mean that only ugly people can be bad? Trust me, I’m ugly as hell, and my body count doesn’t even reach double figures (unless you include the diamond spatula incident, and I still blame Marilyn Monroe for that as she forgot to lock the monkey cage). People associate beauty with good, so when you see a good-looking person commit acts of evil it’s hard to comprehend. Not that you’d really know, as like I said, most of this film is just Ted Bundy as a wacky guy escaping prisons and hanging out with women (did we really need a Ted Bundy sex scene?).
I know this has been quite rambling, but it’s hard to talk about this film with any passion. It doesn’t inspire annoyance, or love, or anything. I watched it, but never really felt truly engaged with it, and that’s the films biggest problem. It just exists, doesn’t tell you anything new or interesting, it just happens. Not sure if it’s the script or the direction but it never really grabs your attention. For a film about murders, it’s incredibly lifeless.
combined with his veneer of a can-do attitude, echoes many promises the recession generation were educated on, but didn’t have delivered. Showing how ruthless someone really has to be to achieve the ever elusive American dream.
manipulative, and downright evil at times. “If it bleeds, it leads” as is repeated multiple times in the film, with Rene Russo giving a chemical turn as the News show runner, clearly taking inspiration from 1996’s Network, with the satirisation of the ultra-violet media being the focus of that film, but as I haven’t seen it, can’t comment further.
Gyllenhaal, giving still a career best performance in an already well versed one, dropping 20 pounds and digging deep to portray a mere reflection of a real man. The other being Dan Gilroy’s dark, clever and witty script; both married perfectly to fully realize and bring this character and story to life, and give us a sociopath for the digital age. (Move over Sherlock)
Behind the camera Dan Gilroy does a clean job of making the L.A. nightscape a very cold and isolating place, reflecting its lead character, and sharing many shades with Michael Mann’s Collateral, which was clearly an influence. It’s a high-class and pristine looking film, especially for a directorial debut, having a gorgeous neo-noir style; and his motifs of focusing on camera screens to establish how the camera sees things – instead of exactly how they actually are – works as a great and sometimes surreal effect.
anything wrong with the direction, just compared to its other elements. It doesn’t seem like it pushes the envelope as much, and has left me wondering how the film would have turned out in the hands of a David Fincher or a 
Troubled Productions 