With two new motion pictures, Ted Bundy is the ‘Boogeyman’ who will not go away
When one other one in every of these motion pictures rolls round, they’re simpler to disregard. Once they begin arriving in pairs, it speaks to each the starvation for the equal of serial-killer celebrities and the sheer glut of content material.
So add two extra to the Bundy filmography — which started with Mark Harmon in “The Deliberate Stranger” in 1986 — each of which give attention to these in legislation enforcement linked to the case: “No Man of God,” which stars Elijah Wooden as FBI profiler Invoice Hagmaier, reverse a chillingly efficient Luke Kirby as Bundy; and “Ted Bundy: American Boogeyman,” with Chad Michael Murray as Bundy and Holland Roden as Kathleen McChesney, the younger Seattle cop pursuing him.
The movies provide a stark distinction in how two motion pictures, each comparatively small in scale, can take related materials and go in wildly totally different instructions — the primary taking part in like a taut, provocative character examine within the cat-and-mouse recreation between the killer and the low-key fed; and the latter representing low-cost exploitation, which presents the killings in a lurid method that provides just about nothing to the story.
That is the duty assigned to Wooden’s Hagmaier, who realizes that Bundy will clam up if he interrogates him, as a substitute participating with him in a way that progressively received Bundy to disclose and share greater than he in any other case would, by way of a sequence of conversations main as much as his execution.
“American Boogeyman” additionally offers with profiling — McChesney and profiler Robert Ressler (Jake Hays) are each real-life figures — however spends far an excessive amount of time peering over Bundy’s shoulder as he chooses and pursues victims.
The urge for food for true crime definitely is not ebbing, with sufficient lovers that the style has flourished in a TV and film market additional fragmented by streaming. Regardless of a gentle weight-reduction plan of serial-killer-related programming, Bundy stays a very sturdy determine whose story retains being recycled via no matter new wrinkle drama and documentary filmmakers can discover.
Provided that, “American Boogeyman” could be dreck, however the title will get one factor proper: This boogeyman is not going away so long as there is a buck to be made off the title.
“No Man of God” opens in theaters and on demand on Aug. 27.
“Ted Bundy: American Boogeyman” is obtainable on demand and DVD on Sept. 3.
