Trailer For ZODIAC KILLER PROJECT - The Most Boring and Uninteresting Documentary on Zodiac
I had a chance to check out Zodiac Killer Project earlier this year at Sundance, and as someone who’s always been fascinated by the Zodiac case, I was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately, what I got was one of the most painfully dull and lifeless documentaries I’ve ever sat through on the subject.
This movie is apparently getting some decent reviews out there, but honestly, I don’t get it. I couldn’t find anything engaging about it. Still, I guess everyone connects with different things, so to each their own.
Directed by Charlie Shackleton, Zodiac Killer Project follows the filmmaker as he reflects on his failed attempt to adapt Lyndon E. Lafferty’s book The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge into what was supposed to be the definitive documentary on the infamous unsolved murders.
After premiering at Sundance, the film is now set for a November 21 theatrical release from Music Box Films, and the first trailer has just dropped.
Here’s the official synopsis: “Filmmaker Charlie Shackleton was hot on the trail of the next great American true crime documentary—a riveting account of a highway patrolman’s quixotic effort to identify and capture the infamous Zodiac Killer.
“Shackleton devised a plan, began collecting interviews, and shot ‘evocative B-roll’ footage of ghostly California freeways and parking lots where the killer may have once lurked. And then the project fell apart, leaving Shackleton with fragments of the unfinished film and time to ruminate on shortcuts and signifiers of the ubiquitous genre.
“A witty and beautifully assembled deep dive into our obsession with serial killers and the stories we tell about them, Shackleton’s Zodiac Killer Project emerges from the ash heap to probe and deconstruct the form with the incisive eye of a true crime connoisseur.”
That synopsis sounds pretty compelling on paper, but the execution? Not so much. The documentary plays out in a slow, overly self-aware way that feels more like an academic essay. I can appreciate what Shackleton was trying to do by turning the camera inward, but for me, it completely sucked the life out of it.
If you’re into experimental documentary storytelling or meta approaches to true crime, you might get something out of it. But if you’re looking for a gripping deep dive into one of the most fascinating unsolved murder cases in American history, Zodiac Killer Project probably won’t scratch that itch.
Check out the trailer below and see for yourself, maybe you’ll find something in it that I didn’t.