Zodiac Killer Project (dir. Charlie Shackleton)
I admit, I just really like Charlie Shackleton as a filmmaker. Like Marge Simpson and her potatoes, I just think his work is neat. Playful, but not obtuse. Shackleton’s films are “arty” in the sense that a casual documentary lover might choose to be turned off by, but they are not impenetrable if you give them a chance. His latest is no different.
In the opening scene of Zodiac Killer Project, Shackleton begins to describe what would have been the opening scene of a different proposed documentary about the Zodiac Killer. Yes, the person who terrified California in the late 1960s. He describes the setup at the location he would have used. He zooms in on some vegetation and then zooms out again. He narrates what would have been. He perhaps filmed in a gay cruising area based on the way men stroll through this seemingly random public rest stop. It cuts to the opening credits, which are a collage of other true crime series opening credits as he explains the many tropes of such things in a tone that is casual, like he’s talking to a friend. He details how they’re less opening credits as they are an opening trailer for those on their phones who need to know whether they ought to keep watching (looking up from their phone) or not. Then it cuts back to some Californian highway. The man in the car, who believes he just looked into the eyes of the Zodiac Killer, was to be Lyndon E. Lafferty, author of the very real book The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up (aka “The Silenced Badge”).
Shackleton doesn’t appear to be describing a documentary, necessarily. At least not one I would expect from him. Although he’s smart enough to know that even there, reconstructions are often a compelling tool for documentarians. As with most of Shackleton’s feature work (we can’t exactly count Paint Drying in this), the filmmaker weaves a narrative out of ideas and line-readings that build and build. He discusses the Amazon algorithm that brought him to Lafferty’s book. He includes “you know”s and “umms” and “so”s, the tone of his voice goes up and down as it would in regular day speech. It’s conversational. He laughs at his own jokes. “Classic”. There aren't too many documentaries where the filmmaker has to reference their own lawyer, too, and what they are and are not allowed to say. Immediately, it works to tear down that wall that so often hangs between art and viewer, between a crime and the person observing it through their television. It’s pretty obvious early on that Zodiac Killer Project isn’t like the numerous true crime documentaries that populate Netflix and other streaming services, a result ultimately of not getting the rights to the book for the author’s family.
As he carries on discussing very inside baseball stuff like “evocative b-roll” or “bactors” (essentially extras that are only ever seen from behind to create generic visual shorthand for humanism), I suppose some may take Zodiac Killer Project as glib. Or like he’s taking us for a ride. “Is this bitch for real?” as Manila Luzon would ask. But therein lies the appear of a film like this. I’m sure that a filmmaker as talented and as smart as Shackleton wouldn’t have made something as tacky or as by-the-numbers as Tiger King (which is referenced here); I am sure he would have had a unique spin on the material beyond even what he describes in voice-over. It doesn't always sound like it, but who knows? Even then, sometimes great art can only be revealed once it all falls apart and the director is forced to pivot. Fast cuts to evidence and flashes of old school bulb photography that are so common in this genre are still employed the filmmaker working here as his own editor once again, but in the context of the film around them now take on entirely different meanings. Meanings that aren’t exactly highly intellectual.
Which I don’t mean as a dig. Rather, I just mean that describing Zodiac Killer Project to someone can make it sound a bit like homework. But instead it is fun and enthralling and exactly the sort of well-timed dissection that can be needed when one watches a lot of this sort of stuff. “Did they use flash bulbs in the ‘60s? We’d have gone with it anyway. It’s very dramatic. Like, the big flash of the bulb, you see the boot print, and then maybe the bulb falls to the ground and smashes next to the boot print. You can see it, can’t you?” Yes, it’s a fine line between smart and smart alec, or just smug, but I think Shackleton carries it off with a bit of youthful cheekiness that I found refreshing.
It carries on like that. There’s the police station grilling with lamps and wall clocks, ashtrays full of stubbed-out cigarettes and reel-to-reel tape recorders. There’s a 16mm home movies of happy childhoods in suburbia riding bikes and running through sprinklers. There’s the microfiche and crime scene photographs and close-ups of police tape. There’s “the dark side” of small towns set to picturesque visions of idyllic American life. Your mileage will obviously vary as this brand of meta filmmaking usually does. I suspect audiences will either get a kick out of it or will find it awfully pretentious. It probably could have stood to shave a little bit of its runtime off—visually and sonically, there’s few peaks and valleys for the viewer to surf (that’s where Shackleton’s own amusement really comes in handy to ward off too many accusations of monotony). Although I am very happy to kept in bits like the rider doing wheelies down a Vallejo street on his motorbike just because it was cool and it just happened to occur while he was shooting a standard establishing shot.
Charlie Shackleton is not the first to do this, obviously. But like I said up top, I just respond to it. I think it’s neat. About half-way through, the director informs us how glad he is he doesn’t have to actually tell the story of the Zodiac Killer for the thousandth time because, after all, he’s not making a movie about the Zodiac Killer anymore. “Did you watch The Jinx?” Zodiac Killer Project suspects that you have. Whether you have or haven’t, this movie works at dissecting the filmmaking of one of the most pervasive genres of film and television of the last decade. And does it with a knowing wink. Cut to recording booth and Charlie talking to us about Paradise Lost 2: Revelations through the glass. Because, yes, there’s so much more documentary history is full of filmmakers who made choices and it’s great to see non-fiction put through such as lens. Would the planned project have been any good? Honestly, I don't know. It comes off as very out of character for Shackleton, and I don't think we needed another film about the Zodiac Killer. Is what came out of it worth watching? Definitely. And about so much more than just a famous serial killer on the loose in California.
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