Zodiac Killer Project review – all filler, all killer
David Jenkins
Film essayist Charlie Shackleton takes dead-aim at the true crime industrial complex in this cheeky documentary about a dream project that wasn’t to be.
4
Anticipation.
Shackleton has the insight and self-lacerating panache of a British John Wilson.
4
Enjoyment.
A formally playful look at documentary ethics (or lack thereof) in the domain of “true crime”.
4
In Retrospect.
There’s more to it than meets the eye. Or is there?
Film essayist Charlie Shackleton takes dead-aim at the true crime industrial complex in this cheeky documentary about a dream project that wasn’t to be.
A gentle critique of crackpot conspiracy culture as much as a tactical dismantling of “true crime” serial fodder, Charlie Shackleton’s Zodiac Killer Project parlays a missed opportunity into a fruitful exploration of a retired traffic cop’s search for one of west coast America’s most notorious serial murderers.
Shackleton claims (perhaps facetiously) that he set out to make a conventional streamer-ready adaptation of Lyndon E Lafferty’s 2012 investigative memoir, ‘The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge’, but when the Lafferty estate said “no bueno” to his request for rights, he decided to build a speculative, self-deconstructing work explaining what he would have made within the stringent bounds of copyright law.
Shackleton leans into endearing Beavis and Butt-Head-lite snickering in his narration, which comes as a result of it feeling more like a live director’s commentary than something more manicured and formalised. Yet he also proves that you don’t need invasive recreations and contrived structuring to wring atmosphere from this type of material, as he demonstrates via numerous passages of description spoken over still landscape shots (captured on nostalgic 16mm film by cinematographer Xenia Patricia). And while there’s a sense that the thesis here lacks originality, there are enough audiovisual flights of fancy to keep the cheeky intellectual jiggery-pokery ticking along nicely.