Bundy: A Legacy of Evil

This has got to be the most awful film I have watched in a long time. In fact, I will as go as far as to say that it's worse than my all time movie low (which near enough caused me to have a mental breakdown and was only saved by disappearing out of the cinema to do some retail therapy) Scooby Doo the movie.

This is a waste of time, the acting is poor and I mean POOR - low budget doesn't have to mean this BAD. I am a little tired of these so called biography films where the writer and director get off on scenes of violence (in between scenes of pure mind numbing tedious acting).

SO - if you get your kicks from listening to piercing screams, with not one great attempt at acting in site, this is the film for you! If they had to tell this lunatics story, then they could have done it so much better than this. I shudder to think who would call it a great film - but then the word 'cult' will no doubt be used instead of the word 'crap'. But hey, you never know how drunk you need to be to get through to the end.

This movie is awful. It's as if someone scanned through the Ted Bundy wiki page and then wrote a screenplay from what they could remember. I can count on my hand the moments in the film that were accurate (not including character names) - and most of them were very small aspects.

Besides the obvious COMPLETE butchery of all the facts, the movie was poorly paced. The acting was often very cheesy. The lead actor might have done a decent job with a good script and director. However, he seemed to have a pallet of creepy facial expressions he'd rotate through. Furthermore, he limped for the whole movie. I realize that some of the only footage available of Ted Bundy walking shows him limping, but it was because he had shackles around his ankles.

This movie was made out of an obsession with serial killers, which is probably why the focus was so helplessly off of the REAL Ted Bundy case - and who he actually was as a person. The part where he howls like a werewolf? Please. They even missed the boat on the method he used to kill. So many things missed - and for no apparent reason. Anyone who has read any account of his killing spree, or trials, would be able to write a better screenplay.

Also: This movie literally took me a month to finish. I'd stop about every three times something was so bad that I couldn't continue anymore. And it took me a month to get through the entire thing.

Corin Nemec is a talented actor and best remembered for his performance on the Fox series, "Parker Lewis Can't Lose," and playing Steven Stayner in "I Know My First Name is Steven." In this low budget thriller, he plays Ted Bundy. He has already played Richard Speck and the Boston strangler. Ted Bundy was a complex man and one of the most notorious serial killers of all time. The scene where he opens a file and closes it without mentioning what was in it about his birth father. As somebody who read Ann Rule's book, his paternity has never been explained. Ted was attractive, charming and intelligent but he couldn't overcome his inner demons. Unlike the Green River Killer, his victims were not the usual prostitutes. Bundy killed women after tricking them into his car. We never really know what he with his victims besides killing them. Nemec's performance is the only salvageable part of this forgettable film. You should watch Mark Harmon in the role.

An episodic plot renders this film structurally inane. One scene has Ted in the desert on his hands and knees howling like a wolf. Cut to an interior scene in some house at Christmas where Ted is on the phone as a suicide prevention counselor. Where's the connection between these two events? The film doesn't tell us. The plot is filled with these random scenes from random periods in Bundy's life, sans any sense of flow or continuity.

Slow, dull, and boring, this film reeks of a quickly written script and overall quick, superficial production. There's not an ounce of suspense or tension. Episodes are long and drawn out. Bundy's manipulation skills are not well displayed, though the one sequence at the restaurant wherein he proposes marriage comes close to showing how he could deceive. Dialogue lacks subtext. The final twenty-minute segment is marginally interesting but only because the real-life outcome is so gripping.

Corin Nemec is dreadfully miscast as Bundy. Nemec, who vaguely resembles a youthful Pat Boone, looks nothing at all like the real Ted Bundy. The crooked smile comes across as contrived. And Nemec plays Bundy like a caricature. Many of the supporting performances are overplayed.

If ever there was a real-life serial killer whose public persona offers the potential for a riveting movie, surely Ted Bundy is the one. Unfortunately, a dreadful script makes for a muddled, incoherent storyline, helped not at all by poor casting and bad acting.

So here's the thing: this movie has a 3.7 on IMDb, which usually means "do not enter, abandon all hope." But honestly? The film itself isn't that bad. It's cheaply made, sure, but it has a certain trashy charm. The performances are fine, the pacing doesn't drag, and there's even a little atmosphere here and there. It's watchable. If only my ears hadn't been assaulted the entire time.

Because holy mother of mixtapes, the soundtrack. I cannot stress this enough: it is wretched. It's not just "bad" like a low-budget synth score-it's bad in a way that feels malicious. Like the musicians were personally out to ruin your day. Every scene that might have worked is immediately kneecapped by a song that sounds like a garage band from 2002 who were told, "Hey guys, can you capture the energy of sadness, but also make it unlistenable?" And they nailed it.

There are full-on songs in here. Singing. Lyrics. As if Bundy's story wasn't grim enough, Feifer decided to slap in some bargain-bin emo ballads that sound like a rejected soundtrack to a PlayStation 2 snowboarding game. Imagine watching Ted Bundy do something horrifying while a whiny rock track screeches in the background like a raccoon stuck in a blender. That's the vibe.

And the thing is-I can see why this movie is rated 3.7. If you rate it as cinema, maybe a 5. If you rate it as a listening experience, it should be studied at The Hague. Seriously, the music alone justifies war crime tribunals.

Which leaves the question: why, Michael Feifer? Why did you do this to us? Did one of the band members help you move a refrigerator once and you owed them eternal debt? Did you lose a poker game where the prize was "force my demo tape into your movie"? Or-hear me out-was this deliberate? Was the real goal to make us suffer? Was this Feifer's idea of method filmmaking, forcing the audience to feel Bundy's sadism by enduring the world's worst soundtrack on loop?

I swear, halfway through I stopped caring about Bundy's crimes and started wondering if I'd ever hear silence again. When the third dreadful ballad kicked in, I caught myself bargaining with God: "If you mute this movie, I'll be a better person."

So yeah-the film itself? Not unwatchable. The soundtrack? An unholy chimera of Nickelback, Creed, and a car alarm. "Bundy: A Legacy of Evil" isn't about Bundy. It's about how evil the music is. Bundy may have killed women in the '70s, but Feifer's soundtrack is still out here killing audiences in 2009 and beyond.

Final score: Movie-5/10. Music-please delete from existence.