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Zodiac Killer Project

Play trailer Zodiac Killer Project 2025 1h 32m Crime Documentary Play Trailer Watchlist
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81% Tomatometer 16 Reviews Popcornmeter 0 Ratings
The true crime genre's ubiquity is driven by people's endless fascination, disgust, and -- bizarrely -- search for comfort in genre conventions that still have the ability to generate complex emotions despite their predictability and familiarity. Having tried and failed to make a documentary about the infamous Zodiac Killer, filmmaker Charlie Shackleton walks the viewer through what his film would have been like and why, using Bay Area landscapes, reenactments, film and TV clips, and voice-over. In this wholly original, self-aware cinematic work, a filmmaker chews over what might have been and playfully probes the inner workings of a genre at saturation point.

Critics Reviews

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Chase Hutchinson TheWrap The film shifts into being a work of criticism in its own right by becoming something of a video essay where we see just how much of the sludge of shallow true crime content falls back on the same old tricks. Jan 31, 2025 Full Review Jordan Mintzer The Hollywood Reporter Charlie Shackleton gets at the heart of what makes these docs so successful on both a psychological and schematic level. He deconstructs the genre but also manages to deepen it. Jan 31, 2025 Full Review Chuck Bowen Slant Magazine Zodiac Killer Project is a wicked embodiment of Marshall McLuhan’s notion of the media itself being the message. Rated: 3/4 Jan 31, 2025 Full Review Christopher Campbell Nonfics While I appreciate what Zodiac Killer Project is doing and how it’s doing it, the film can be frustratingly vague, incomplete in several of its points, and monotonous in its overall expression. Jan 31, 2025 Full Review Nandini Ramnath Scroll.in Shackleton...is not just carrying out an elegant post-mortem of the true crime genre. Zodiac Killer Project questions the very notion of truth in non-fiction. Jan 30, 2025 Full Review Chad Collins Dread Central Zodiac Killer Project intends to indict an entire subgenre, though by the end, this subversive exercise in true crime antics indicts only itself. Rated: 2.5/5 Jan 29, 2025 Full Review Read all reviews

Cast & Crew

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Zodiac Killer Project

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Movie Info

Synopsis The true crime genre's ubiquity is driven by people's endless fascination, disgust, and -- bizarrely -- search for comfort in genre conventions that still have the ability to generate complex emotions despite their predictability and familiarity. Having tried and failed to make a documentary about the infamous Zodiac Killer, filmmaker Charlie Shackleton walks the viewer through what his film would have been like and why, using Bay Area landscapes, reenactments, film and TV clips, and voice-over. In this wholly original, self-aware cinematic work, a filmmaker chews over what might have been and playfully probes the inner workings of a genre at saturation point.
Director
Charlie Shackleton
Producer
Catherine Bray, Anthony Ing, Charlie Shackleton
Genre
Crime, Documentary
Original Language
English
Runtime
1h 32m