There’s a very particular audience for Zodiac Killer Project: those who have watched many true-crime documentaries, but nevertheless hold the genre somewhat in disdain. Director Charlie Shackleton had planned a true-crime doc of his own, centered on the infamous Zodiac killer, but the project fell through just before filming began. In its absence, he made Zodiac Killer Project, which consists of an assemblage of establishing shots from locations he would have used; voiceover of his own readings from and references to the source material he planned to draw from (Lyndon Lafferty’s The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up); and snarky demonstrations of the narrative and aesthetic cliches that the true-crime genre— especially as found on streaming services in the last 15 years or so—routinely indulge in. It’s the last element, while amusing at first, that eventually wears thin. When experimenting with his own techniques—Shackleton gets ingenious mileage out of slow zooms and pans in those location shots—Zodiac Killer Project works as a provocative, meta consideration of the genre’s form. When dumping on other films and the genre in general, the movie comes across as a bit hypocritical and smug.
(11/19/2025)
