Zodiac Killer Project
Charlie Shackleton / United States & United Kingdom / 2025 / 92 min
The true crime genre is deconstructed in an entertaining and intelligent film with a brilliant eye for genre clichés and movie magic. Intellectual pop at its best, set against a backdrop of 70s California.
In the 1960s and 70s, The Zodiac Killer spread fear in San Francisco with a string of unsolved murders and a series of cryptic messages to police and newspapers written in code. In other words, perfect material for a classic true crime film like David Fincher’s thriller ‘Zodiac’ – and that is what Charlie Shackleton had first planned to make. But things didn’t quite go as planned. For reasons best explained by Shackleton himself with irresistible self-deprecating humour, the original project ended up as a deconstruction of the true crime genre itself. The result is both wildly entertaining and deeply intelligent.