Zodiac Killer Project

Bluesky

True crime has always been big business. Back in the 1800s it was penny dreadfuls that offered lurid details of murder while Truman Capote’s 1965 non-fiction book In Cold Blood marks, for many, the beginning of the modern era’s fascination with crime. In recent years, the surge in podcasting and streaming platforms has fuelled the genre further, with hits including Netflix’s Making A Murderer and Amazon Prime’s The Jinx.

Both of those, and a host of similar true crime shows, are up for discussion in the latest documentary from Charlie Shackleton. In essence an essay film, spurred by his failed attempt to make a film about San Francisco’s Zodiac Killer, this is a surprisingly droll deconstruction of crime reconstruction. Shackleton may be having his cake and eating it to a degree but this is a sharply observant critique of the phenomenon that digs beyond how these shows look and feel to consider their underlying ethics.

The British director was drawn in by what might be considered a penny dreadful of the modern era, written by ex-cop Lyndon E Lafferty and with the sort of name Police Squad would have loved: The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge. Now with the book rights fallen through, he decides to offer a commentary of what it would have looked like if he’d had the chance to make it.

A locked-off shot of a rest stop car park sets the tone for much of the visuals. It’s a sunny day and people occasionally drift through the shot. This footage was, presumably, mostly captured while he was location scouting for the movie he planned to make.As Shackleton talks through premise of the failed film - recounting the incident in which Lafferty locked eyes with a man who he came to believe was the killer - the playfulness of the film becomes apparent, as he does, indeed, use cutaways to eyes at the appropriate moment.

This sort of trick punctuates a film that is also a lesson in how effective a simple slow zoom in can be as a way of building tension. While continuing to recount the failed film - generally relying on incidents that are on the public record so as not to get done for copyright - Shackleton begins to dissect the tropes and cliches of the true crime genre from the credits on in. He notes the similarities in scoring, and out of focus images and birds flying and a whole lot more. Later he also picks up on other similarities, the fact that every other cop seems to be nicknamed “the bulldog”, for example, and the use of certain establishing shots, like an interrogation light or an ashtray.

While frequently funny, the film - which premiered at Sundance and featured in Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival this week - is at its most interesting when it comes to directorial ethics. The case of Andrew Jarecki’s The Jinx - which featured a confession of murder - is laid out on the slab and carefully dissected. There are no direct accusations but Shackleton wryly observes how handy it was that the tape with the incriminating evidence wasn’t happened upon until so close to the film’s running date. There’s talk of the way victims tend to be given only a small amount of screentime and Shackleton’s own ethics are in evidence when someone in his crew we hear off-camera asks him if he wants to outline the Zodiac’s spree. “The only saving grace is that we don’t have to retell the story of the Zodiac killer for the 1000th time,” he says.

Watching this may not stop people tuning in to the next true crime show that pops up on their favourite streamer, but it is likely to make them think a lot more about the way they are being manipulated by it and the copycat crimes that are being committed.