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Ted Bundy
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Biography, Crime, Drama, Thriller
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Michael Reilly Burke, Boti Bliss, Julianna McCarthy, Jennifer Tisdale, Michael Santos
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Matthew Bright
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...well, you're still going to be waiting.
As in "The Deliberate Stranger," the details of Bundy's crimes and victims are shuffled around (although this movie is more true to life as far as plain facts go) and very few real names are used. For example, Bundy is seen kidnapping his last victim, "Suzanne," but then footage from the actual press conference after his execution is shown, and is it said he was executed for the murder of Kimberly Diane Leach (her real name). It can be confusing for a viewer familiar with the facts of the case; I spent chunks of time trying to keep straight in my head which character represented which victim.
There are other small film clips of the real Bundy, which really make you sit up and pay attention. I thought they were a good addition to the film; to me, it reminds viewers that this is not just a story, it actually happened.
Disappointingly, the movie puts much of its focus on Bundy's relationship with "Lee," the model for Elizabeth Kendall (who later wrote "The Phantom Prince"), and virtually ignores his friendship with true crime writer Ann Rule (who was writing stories about the missing girls during the time Ted was killing them) and marriage to Carole Ann Boone, who later gave birth to his daughter.
The movie seems to draw on Robert Keppel's "Riverman: Ted Bundy & I Hunt the Green River Killer," which included gory details of Bundy's last minute confessions to Keppel. Some details are recreated for the movie, with very disturbing images. Hopefully, that would be a sure-fire cure for the "over 200 women" who wrote Ted while he was on Death Row to tell him they loved him (a fact mentioned at the end of this movie).
Another reviewer mentioned that the execution scenes were a protest against the death penalty. I disagree; by the end of the movie, after watching Bundy commit henious crimes in full, Technicolor detail, you don't much care what happens to him, and if he suffered, it's only a fraction of what his many victims suffered.
I could have done without the collection of "I'm Ted Bundy!" children in the final scene. I get the point: even your average, clean-cut person, as Ted seemed to be, can be a monster. Bundy himself said serial killers are husbands, brothers, sons, etc. I just think there was another way that point could have been made, and I found the children distracting from the story as a whole. However, if the film makers went for shock value with that scene, they certainly succeeded.
All in all, the movie is worth a watch (if the disturbing images and graphic violence don't bother you) if you're interested in Bundy's story but already aware of the facts. For the casual viewer, or someone wanting to learn more about Bundy, not so much.
POSTSCRIPT: A few days after this review was posted, I received a long, rambling, rather disturbing email from someone claiming to be Matthew Bright, the director of this film. One can only hope it was an impostor, and that the real Matthew Bright has better things to do than email people who give negative reviews to his movie (and I am not by far the only one; check out Rottentomatoes.com for more).
Bright claimed that Carole Ann Boone was not worthy of inclusion in his movie (one of my criticisms) because "her relationship with Bundy was based on lies." I highly doubt that Bundy's relationship with Liz Kendall, explored at length in the movie, was based on total honesty. By Kendall's own admission in "The Phantom Prince: My Life With Ted Bundy," she was lied to from the very beginning. So that takes care of that argument.
Bright went on to say that Ann Rule was also not worthy of mention in his film because she was just an "ordinary person" who was fooled by Bundy. Well, that's the point; she was also an ordinary person who happened to be a close friend of Bundy's for many years, and corresponded with him while in prison. This argument negates his later claim that Bundy was not as normal as he seemed. Obviously not, but he did manage to fool a lot of people for a very long time, as documented in other sources, both print and other media (notably A&E's Biography of Bundy).
Personally, I don't care whether Bright likes or respects Boone and Rule or not. The fact remains, they were both major figures in Bundy's life, and as such must be included in any film hoping to tell Bundy's story in an accurate manner.
Which brings me back to my main gripe about the film in the first place: it's not accurate. Other than that, someone who actually reads my review closely will note that I found several things that impressed me about the film: news clips of the real Bundy, the mention of women who wrote to Bundy on Death Row, and the shock value of the scene with the children at the end.
The fact that the director (or someone claiming to be the director) got so very defensive about the film due to a review that isn't really all that negative, should tell you something right there.
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