Zodiac Killer Project Interrogates True Crime, But Ignores its own Complicity

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How effectively can a person critique a mode of filmmaking when that same person has participated–or wanted to participate–in it themselves? What extra burden of self reflection does this kind of project demand of the filmmaker spearheading it? These are questions against which Charlie Shackleton’s new Sundance meta-documentary Zodiac Killer Project constantly butts its head. The young English provocateur filmmaker–who once filmed 10 hours of paint drying, and then called the resulting film Paint Drying as a symbolic challenge to British censors, who had to watch it all in order to assign a rating–has crafted a film dealing with the failure of the creative process, an outline of the film he planned to make but was unable to bring together when he failed to secure the rights to the source material. Within Zodiac Killer Project, he entertainingly shines a light on the tropes and techniques of the ever-proliferating true crime subgenre, providing a fascinating analysis of a presentation style that has reached its saturation point and then some. But at the same time, Shackleton repeatedly turns away from the additional responsibility he ought to be embracing, to acknowledge the more commercial, cynical drive that was presumably leading him to make a Zodiac Killer documentary in 2024 in the first place. He approaches his task with holier-than-thou energy, coming off as both dismissive of his own audience and subtly bitter at the way his film ultimately didn’t come together, tainting his commentary on the format with personal baggage.

Shackleton’s intent had been to create a feature length documentary film from author Lyndon E. Lafferty’s book The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge, first published in 2012. Within that book, conspiratorial author Lafferty (a former California Highway Patrol officer) details his chance encounter with a man in 1970 who he came to believe was the infamous serial killer known as the Zodiac, who terrorized the San Francisco Bay area with a spate of confirmed killings between 1968-1969. Lafferty would go on to obsess about that individual for the rest of his life, form a sort of vigilante investigative unit with other acquaintances, and pursue circumstantial evidence about the individual for decades to come, alleging that a cover-up in various levels of law enforcement prevented serious investigation of his pet suspect. At the time of the book’s publishing, Lafferty asserted that his suspect remained alive, but he refused to reveal the man’s true name, instead using the pseudonym George Russell Tucker–a common hang-up of independently researched true crime, as the “silenced” author wants to avoid legal action by stopping short of a concrete accusation. In the years since The Silenced Badge was published, both Lafferty and his suspect have reportedly passed away.

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Not that this matters to Shackleton, who professes fascination with the Zodiac case but simultaneously comes off as contemptuous of the very audience that his documentary would have been attempting to court. Asked at one point by his sound technician–the only other voice in the film–if he’s going to provide some basic context on the Zodiac murders, Shackleton scoffs and says no, not at all: “I feel like the only saving grace of not getting to make the film, is that we don’t have to retell the story of the Zodiac killer for the thousandth time.” This, only minutes after Shackleton describes the disappointment of not getting to make the original documentary as “kind of devastating, because I really had figured the whole thing out.” His commentary is full of this sort of conflicting sentiment, at one moment suggesting that the case has been examined to death by amateur sleuths who have muddied the waters beyond any remaining value, and then breathlessly stating a moment later how effective his film could have been, in what he says would have been the first “major” Zodiac documentary, dismissing countless others. You don’t know which Shackleton to believe–the one critiquing the buzzard-like nature of the picked-over true crime genre, or the guy who’s certain he would have made a great entry in that genre.

This is the recurring problem with Zodiac Killer Project, at the end of the day: It never feels like the director is able to be honest with his now Sundance-centric audience–ironically distanced from the streaming service true crime rank and file–about his original intentions in wanting to adapt Lafferty’s book. He simply describes it as a compelling narrative about Lafferty’s obsession, while skirting the seemingly much more elemental reason: He wanted to make a commercially viable, “easy” documentary that could be seen by a larger audience than his previous work. The man wanted to make a quick buck! He wanted to succeed! And the thing is, that’s perfectly fine and understandable, especially for a young filmmaker trying to make a living. The entire project would be far better off if Shackleton simply let the audience in on a relatable desire for commercial success, rather than criticizing the genre from what reads as some kind of perch of moral superiority. Among the people he seems to feel wronged by: Lafferty’s family, who ultimately didn’t sign over the rights to the book, for reasons unknown. It feels like a grievance for the director, but he’s wise enough to know that he can’t sound bitter about it, so he has to pretend that it doesn’t bother him.

Nevertheless, he then proceeds in Zodiac Killer Project to tell the audience every piece of information he legally can give about The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge, as if his primary intent is to spite the family for not going along with his proposed documentary. It’s as if he’s trying to “spoil” the story enough to make it more difficult for anyone else to potentially adapt the same material, in a display of “If I can’t have it, then no one can” petulance. The family withholding the rights likewise becomes a convenient excuse for the film not getting made; a crutch that allows Shackleton to absolve himself of any shred of potential blame for a project that simply fell through. And hey, he still got to Sundance in the end anyway, right?

This attitude is a shame, because as an examination of the true crime genre itself, Zodiac Killer Project is often quite entertaining, and hits on many valid points, leaving its audience afterward with a greater understanding of the tools and psychology of docuseries filmmaking, and the tricks that a filmmaker can use in order to both draw the viewer into the story and manipulate their perception of that story’s credibility. As he strings together intros from numerous true crime series described as being disjointed and cut together “like they’ve been made by the serial killer themselves,” you can’t deny that the genre has come to employ a startlingly homogenized visual aesthetic in the last decade. Likewise, Shackleton gives titles to tropes that one will have a difficult time not noting in the future, from “backtors”–shadowy performers only seen from behind in reenactments–to “evocative B roll,” which constitutes so much of the imagery that supports documentary filmmaking: A swinging lightbulb in an interrogation scene; a spinning tape recorder; a slow shot of blood pooling on concrete. It’s a refreshingly truthful extrapolation upon how the format is so often used to lead an audience in the direction of a preconceived end point, while allowing that audience to believe they’re drawing their own well-reasoned conclusions. Even a true crime geek is likely to learn a thing or two, here.

Unfortunately, the filmmaker’s insight into the genre as a whole runs into a dead end whenever the time comes to acknowledge that his Zodiac killer film would have employed all the same techniques and more likely than not have involved all the same pitfalls. Shackleton describes how he would have carefully composed shots by using these tropes, suddenly lacking the same critical eye he had when describing the genre’s cliches moments earlier, when they’re applied to his project. He criticizes the lack of empathy and self-righteousness in something like Netflix’s Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, while ignoring that his film also would only have been made possible by exploiting the famous murders of numerous individuals, victims he had no intention of centering. At one point he throws network TV execs under the bus for the ethical lapses in filmmakers they’re willing to condone, saying “If you are convinced it’s for the greater good, there are very few ethical lines as far as HBO execs are concerned.” This, when he would have been trying to sell his completed film to those very same execs.

Shackleton is simply unwilling to interrogate what it says about him that he was about to make another film exactly like the films he’s describing as problematic. How the filmmaker could possibly look past these massive, looming questions in making Zodiac Killer Project, I have no idea, but he somehow manages to do it. It’s as if he’s partitioned himself into two entirely separate people: The ambitious Shackleton who was going to make a potboiler documentary about the Zodiac for a payday, and the more perceptive Shackleton who is disappointed about the way everything shook out, and wants to show his audience how the true crime sausage is made, burning bridges behind him. And apparently, never the twain shall meet.

For Zodiac Killer Project to work, it would have to be coming from a filmmaker who is fully ready to admit their own culpability in continuing to fuel the worst aspects of the genre they intended to exploit. That kind of brutal self-admission would have taken a great deal of courage, but Shackleton can’t quite get there, even if he comes close at times. It’s too bad, because I do believe there’s value in the idea of walking an audience through the creative process in this manner; a look into the mind of a filmmaker as they compose and weigh their own artistic drive against the necessity of tailoring a film to the taste and desires of their audience. In this case, the filmmaker’s reticence is simply getting in the way of honestly exploring their story.

Director: Charlie Shackleton
Release date: Jan. 27, 2025 (Sundance Film Festival)

Jim Vorel is Paste’s Movies editor and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter or on Bluesky for more film writing.