No Man of God Adequately Examines the Myth of Ted Bundy

With the latest—though not the last—Ted Bundy biopic No Man of God, director Amber Sealey displays a marked disinterest in portraying the notorious serial killer as a sexy criminal savant. Instead, the film grapples with how Bundy (played with eerie ease by Luke Kirby) eventually comes to confess his culpability in the killings of 30 women in Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado and Florida before his execution—as well as the complicated relationship FBI profiler William Hagmaier (a measured Elijah Wood) forges with the reprehensible individual he is assigned to interview for the burgeoning Behavior Analysis Unit at Quantico.

Though No Man of God is a seemingly straightforward account of the final chapter of this country’s arguably most iconic serial murderer, it is also a concerted effort to dispel certain myths surrounding Bundy’s legacy. His status as an attractive, charismatic and affable individual are seldom portrayed in the film; his menacing nature, cold demeanor and remorselessness are the intended focus, with a beguiling veneer presented as much more chilling than garden-variety conniving charm. It’s clear that even Bundy himself is displeased with the narrative the media spins of him, a frustration that Hagmaier utilizes for his own personal gain. He earns Bundy’s trust by playing into his narcissistic nitpicking, immediately presenting the common misconception that Bundy is a “master of disguise” as opposed to a strikingly ordinary (and thus chameleon-like) individual. This baseline understanding of Bundy’s personal gripe with his own depiction on the part of Hagmaier is overtly framed as a means to an end—obtaining confessions that will put the victims’ families at ease—but it also works as a narrative tool which subliminally confronts the media’s sensationalist coverage of Bundy’s trial, which in turn influenced his infamy well after his execution.

Particularly when presented alongside Joe Berlinger’s 2019 Netflix film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile—adapted from the memoir of Elizabeth Kloepfer (published under the pen name Elizabeth Kendall) about her years-long relationship with Bundy, who committed his crimes under her unsuspecting nose—Sealey’s depiction of Bundy is noticeably more unflinching and unforgiving. Where the earlier film presents a quasi-sympathetic Bundy as portrayed by Zac Efron, who feels somewhat miscast with his boyish good looks and Disney Channel connections, Sealey keeps Kirby’s Bundy cleverly confined within prison walls throughout the entirety of the film; he is never freed via flashbacks or even within interpersonal conversations with anyone outside of Hagmaier. The only glimpse the audience gets of Bundy’s psyche is through his own testimony—by being forced to look into his eyes, hear his words and sparse chuckles as he recounts the rape, torture and murder of countless women, there is an instant inability to cushion oneself in the mythology that surrounds his murderous exploits and personal relationships.

Yet Sealey is still able to imbue the film with an interesting moral conundrum concerning the death penalty, an intellectual exercise that could have easily been discarded in order to fully exploit a satisfying ending culminating in Bundy’s state-sanctioned death. Though initially presented as another woman wooed by the killer’s intoxicating spell, Carolyn Lieberman (Aleksa Palladino in a role undoubtedly meant to portray Bundy’s last speculated love interest, Florida attorney Dana Weiner), confronts Hagmaier when he dismisses her tears over Bundy’s final unsuccessful plea to avoid his impending death penalty as the sorrow of a devastated lover: “I know what people say. You want to know what I think of Ted Bundy? I hate him…But murder is murder.”