Zodiac Killer Project

Watched at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Charlie Shackleton has crafted a strange essay-like documentary about a tale of a movie that never existed, using both random footage around the landscapes, commentary, and archival footage to express his views and ideas about the concept. It's truly fascinating because Shackleton has created some interesting works in his career and while this one is just as experimental as his usual works, it offers a good insight to the true crime doc subgenera with a fresh perspective, and a good sense of self-awareness about it's morality, ideas, and environment.

Shackleton offers out good points about the issues with modern crime doc-genres and placing with both it's critiques and concepts together, it becomes more of a personal essay journey of reflection and cinematic making. Presented with some great visual presentations, sound designs and musical score, it becomes personal and investing. A exploration that something that will never happen, to be imagined.

Therefore, I say it's an experience.

I saw this at 2025 Sundance. First, I'll start with the positives. The director really knows the true crime doc subgenre. Enough where he can comprehensively compare their similarities and expose the tropes. I wish he had stuck to this format, turning this into an indictment of our obsession with true crime. Instead he narrates B-roll or photos for 90 minutes, telling you about the film he would have made if he could. That's all that this is.

However. This is Exhibit A in you can't say no to white men because they'll just do what they want anyway. The family wouldn't sell him the rights to the book, so he just works around it in a way that is boring and doesn't add anything to the story. Why not wait a few years and see if the family has changed its mind about the IP? Why shoehorn in this forced approach where you then become part of the focus of the doc? A self-aggrandizing vanity project that falls flat, burying the gems he has sprinkled throughout.

PS - I'm married to a white man and do not hate men.