‘Zodiac Killer Project’ tears up the true crime rulebook and goes rogue. (Courtesy of the Roxie)
What do you do when you’ve meticulously planned out a documentary, only to fail to acquire the rights to the book it’s based on at the very last moment? A lot of filmmakers would throw their hands up, have nervous breakdowns and then go back to the drawing board.
When that exact scenario happened to British producer/director Charlie Shackleton, he opted instead to make a documentary about the documentary that he’s never going to make. Quite wonderfully, something about the process of breaking down his original film, scene by scene, allowed Shackleton to realize that, had it ever been made, his project would have conformed to formulas, reverted to clichés and, in some cases, actively obscured the truth for the sake of dramatic narrative. Why? Because the film was going to be yet another true crime documentary.
Shackleton’s project was going to be about the Zodiac Killer. Or rather, about one traffic cop’s dogged pursuit of a man he believed was the Zodiac Killer. That cop, Lyndon E. Lafferty, wrote The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up, AKA The Silenced Badge about what he believed to be an active cover-up within the Solano County sheriff’s office. Lafferty’s 2012 book remains widely available today, though the man he believed was the Zodiac is rarely considered one of the most likely suspects.
Zodiac Killer Project distinguishes itself from the plethora of other documentaries about the Bay Area serial killer by featuring the Zodiac only as a kind of afterthought. There are no details here about the actual crimes, no mention of the victims, and no mind given to the cops who were actually assigned to investigate the case. At one point, when a voice off-camera urges Shackleton to share details about the crimes, the filmmaker replies: “That’s the only saving grace of not getting to make the film. We don’t have to retell the story of the Zodiac Killer for the thousandth time.”
Filmmaker Charlie Shackleton providing disarmingly conversational narration in ‘Zodiac Killer Project.’
Without doubt, the best parts of Zodiac Killer Project emerge when Shackleton, in a disarmingly conversational style, breaks down the tropes and visual standards we have come to expect from contemporary true crime documentaries. At one point, he describes how the opening title sequence of his documentary “kind of would have made itself.” He goes on to compare the (incredibly similar) title sequences of The Most Dangerous Animal of All, The Jinx, Evil Genius, Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer, Don’t F–k With Cats, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, The Case Against Adnan Syed, Amanda Knox, Making a Murderer, as well as Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey and I Love You, Now Die.
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“I feel like all these things are basically built to the same model now,” Shackleton says over clips from each show. “The same sorts of images pop up again and again. You’ve got, like, birds taking flight, and a shadowy man walking away, and kind of country-inflected music with a dark edge. Everything is sort of vague and fluid … Lots of tiny text, too small for human eyes … It kind of sets up everything and nothing.”
Shackleton does this at every step of the documentary, analyzing the use of generic true crime imagery (footage of tape recorders and microfiche rolling, interrogation lights swinging, etc.), the inclusion of weathered home movie footage, interviews with stern cops (“the second you point a camera at them, they know what to do”), and interviews with people talking about how safe their neighborhood felt before their troubles began. His commentary about the obligatory black-and-white wall of victims’ photos that shows up at the end of most true crime documentaries is particularly biting.
Zodiac Killer Project is not exactly a thrill-a-minute (humans are rarely seen on-screen), but it is an amusing deconstruction of something most of us watch. That this deconstruction comes from a man who clearly also loves the true crime genre helps enormously. As a viewer, it’s fun to acknowledge the absurdity of all of this conformity without also feeling bad about still enjoying true crime shows and movies. Shackleton clearly sets this tone. For example, after offering up some particularly harsh words about the ethics of Netflix’s Dahmer series, Shackleton also exclaims, “Yeah, it was good. Evan Peters!”
Zodiac Killer Project is a documentary that would make a great addition to film classes everywhere. But because it doesn’t take a wholly academic approach, the film also provides true crime fans with a very amusing bingo card for use with all future documentary viewings. (I have watched two films since viewing Zodiac Killer Project and both viewings were indelibly impacted by Shackleton’s cynical observations.)
If you are looking for a documentary that will explain the Zodiac Killer case in depth, this is not the one for you. If you are a true crime nerd who already knows everything about this case and gobbles up whatever you can find on the topic, Zodiac Killer Project offers a refreshing and enlightening approach that will change how you interact with the genre moving forward. The kicker is, the killers may no longer be the point.
