Zodiac (2007): Based on the Robert Graysmith books about the real life notorious Zodiac, a serial killer who terrorized San Francisco with a string of seemingly random murders during the 1960s and 1970s.
David Fincher is one of my favorite directors, in fact his Fight Club is in my Top 10 favorites movies. His follow up Panic Room did not leave up to expectations and when I heard that he was going to make another movie about a serial killer I was worried.
Thankfully my worries are gone. Zodiac is a completely different type of serial killer film, it brings a refreshing point of view to this trite sub-genre.
The film is a detailed recounting of the Zodiac murders from the point of view of the detectives and a newspaper cartoonist. It is based on a the book written by the cartoonist which details each event by date, time, place and participants.
The film is a series of segments, each starting with the date and place, recounting not only the Zodiac murders, but also everything related to them in the detectives and the cartoonist’s lives.
Right from the start I knew this was not a typical Fincher film. He usually likes to create visually stunning opening credits (Seven, Fight Club, Panic Room), but the credits for Zodiac were pretty normal.
In this film Fincher has focused on telling the story, putting aside visual techniques that usually call attention to themselves. This time he seems to put all his technical expertise in service of the story, and the result is definitely worth it.
The only sequence that was visually different is the car driving sequence shot from the sky, which seems to be fixed on the car, so that when the car turns is seems like the earth beneath it is turning, while the car is unmoved. That was the only tricky shot I can recall. I wonder if he used CGI.
The actually murders scenes are shot in a way that made me feel uneasy. There is no gore, but the tension and the way the victims and killer behave is just chilling. Not to mention the way he stabs those victims near the lake, real scary. Again, no gore at all.
But the focus of this film is Robert Graysmith’s obsession to find the Zodiac. He loses his family, just so that he can solve this case. This not being a typical Hollywood movie, and especially being based on a real case, we don’t get a neat ending where everything is solved. But we do get some kind of closure.
Even though this is a 2.5 hours movie I did not feel it was long at all. All the time I was glued to the screen and waiting for the next scene. This is an incredible film, one of the best I’ve seen in the past few years.
Rating: 5 Stars