CULTURE

Zac Efron’s Ted Bundy Balances Dating and Serial Killing in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile Trailer

He plays serial killer Ted Bundy in the upcoming film.

Jan. 25, 2019

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In the two decades between Ted Bundy and Elizabeth Kloepfer’s first meeting in 1969, and the day Bundy was executed by electric chair in 1989, the pair carried on a tumultuous relationship, with Kloepfer regularly alternating between standing by her boyfriend and calling the police to report that he might be the serial killer they were after. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the upcoming film about Bundy that’s slated to debut at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend, tells the story of Bundy’s crimes and arrest from Kloepfer’s perspective. Its first trailer, which arrived on Friday, focuses on the relationship between the pair, played by Zac Efron and Lily Collins.

After that ill-fated 1969 meeting at a bar in Seattle, scenes of Kloepfer and Bundy’s domestic bliss—”When I feel his love, I feel like I’m on top of the world,” Collins quips—are interspersed with shots of police finding plastic bags, rope, a crowbar, and other sinister accoutrements in Bundy’s backseat and bringing him in for questioning. After that, things really go downhill: Koepfler notices a resemblance between her boyfriend and a police sketch, Bundy is seen attacking a woman with a crowbar and dragging another into the woods, a shaken but seemingly still unconvinced Koepfler visits Bundy in jail, and Florida prosecutor Larry Simpson (Jim Parsons) questions Bundy (who gleefully claims all the media attention has made him “more popular than Disney World”) in a courtroom.

If spending two hours reliving the brutal murders of dozens of women isn’t exactly your cup of tea, focus instead on the film’s impeccable 1970s style. Throughout the trailer, Bundy sports patterned polos, chunky turtlenecks, a classic brown leather jacket, a brightly colored cardigan—perfect for jumping out windows to escape the police—and, of course, the infamous powder blue suit and comically large bowtie he wore to court. Koepfler’s wardrobe, meanwhile, is full of the floral button-downs, puffy-sleeved peasant tops, and bell-bottom jeans of your ’70s-inspired dreams.

Watch the trailer in full, below:

As the trailer seems to confirm, Efron has previously said that Extremely Wicked won’t glorify Bundy’s life or downplay any of the things he did. “He wasn’t a person to be glorified. It simply tells a story and sort of how the world was able to be charmed over by this guy who was notoriously evil, and the vexing position that so many people were put in, the world was put in. It was fun to go and experiment in that realm of reality,” he told Entertainment Tonight in March 2018. And don’t worry—Efron also assured the world that he didn’t have to kill anyone to get into the right mindset for the role. “I didn’t take it home,” he said. “I didn’t go full Method and I didn’t have to, like, do any weird stuff to anybody to get into character.”