One of my favorite documentaries of the year explores the very form of non-fiction filmmaking in immensely entertaining fashion. Charlie Shackleton’s Zodiac Killer Project finds the director walking through his failed attempt to adapt Lyndon E. Lafferty’s book The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge into the first major documentary on the unsolved case. After a Sundance premiere, it’s now set for a November 21 theatrical release from Music Box Films and the first trailer has arrived.
Here’s the 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.”
I said in my review, “Unlike a project such as Jodorowsky’s Dune, where one is rather devastated it never came to light, it’s hard to imagine Shackleton’s intended project would’ve actually been all that compelling. This makes his conversational, self-reflexive approach––narration in which he wholly improvises, aside from a few general notes––all the more engaging. He’s not afraid to self-correct when he gets a fact wrong or laugh at something he’s taking a jab at, making one feel like they are in the room with him, captivated to see what trope he’ll tackle next.”
See the trailer below.
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