Matthew Bright's biopic about Theodore Bundy, the notorious US serial killer executed in 1989 for dozens of murderous sex crimes, is one of the most drearily pointless new films around. It has neither the energetic bad taste of an exploitation pic, nor the psychological rigour of a drama like In Cold Blood.

The film just plods blankly along, detailing each slashing and bludgeoning with crude explicitness, and each grisly blow elicits not a gasp of horror but a wince of impatience and distaste.

It is as if director Bright has absorbed the autistic modus operandi of the killer himself, and shows no interest in the perspectives that might have made his movie valuable. Bundy was illegitimate; he thought his mother was his sister; he had a long relationship with a divorced mother who had no idea about his hidden life - or was she subconsciously complicit?

Bright shows no real interest in any of this, and squanders the narrative potential of one of the most extraordinary things in the Bundy story: two astonishing, successful escapes from custody. None of it, apparently, is as important as the steady tempo of rape, slash, rape, slash.

Michael Reilly Burke does a reasonable job playing the grinning Bundy, looking weirdly like a young Christopher Reeve. But he is adrift in a movie that has no idea what to make of his life. This picture is arguably more honest than sexy star vehicles like Red Dragon. That doesn't stop it from being unrewarding, unpleasant and very, very boring.