© Music Box Films
Zodiac Killer Project (2025)
Zodiac Killer Project (2025)
The Zodiac Killer was a contemporary of Charles Manson, a never identified serial killer working the San Francisco Bay at the end of the ‘60s. He’s been the subject of numerous books and movies, many of them sensationalized, and was the basis for the Scorpio character in Dirty Harry and the inspiration for David Fincher’s 2007 thriller Zodiac.
Wanting to try his hand at the pervasive, streaming-all-the-time true crime genre, rogue British documentarian Charlie Shackleton (Beyond Clueless) discovered a book (via algorithm) called The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up. The author, California Highway Patrolman Lyndon Lafferty, claimed to have identified the killer but was thwarted by the nefarious powers that be. Shackleton negotiated for the rights to the book with Lafferty’s descendants—and began scouting location scenes before being turned down for reasons unknown. He decided to make his version of Lafferty’s account anyway.
Zodiac Killer Project is a fiendishly clever take down of true crime dramas. Step by step, Shackleton’s voiceover narrates how he would have made a hackneyed authorized version of Lafferty’s account had he received permission. Zodiac Killer Project debuted at Sundance in 2025, where it won the NEXT Innovator Award. It’s been released on DVD by Music Box Films with bonus B-roll and other footage.
Carefully skirting IP issues, Shackleton quotes short passages from the Lafferty’s Cover-Up as he paraphrases the patrolman’s claim of spotting a man resembling the police sketch of the killer in a parking lot, glaring with an “unflinching stare of hate. I knew I was looking at the face of death.” Jotting down the plate number, he identified the suspect as George Russell Tucker (serial killers always have three names, Shackleton observes) and the Vallejo County sheriff refused to act. Insert a mandatory quote from an aggrieved, anonymous citizen along the lines of “Power in Vallejo? It’s all about who you know.” Undeterred, the honest patrolman launches his own, freelance investigation.
Shackelton shows how the true crime drama would have looked, including the made-up dining room from Lafferty’s house full of pinboards linking names with photos and photocopied documents. With filming in and around police stations problematic, he shoots the exterior of a ‘60s public library as stand-in for the sheriff’s office, and a long corridor whose harsh lighting invests the scene with ominous implications. Oh, let’s not forget stock home movies from someone’s ‘50s suburban childhood to suggest the killer’s backstory.
Chuckling at the movie he might have made, Shackleton shows how such cliches have been used in other true crime documentaries, starting with the scratchy aesthetics (“as if made by the serial killer”) of the opening credits (“It sets up everything and nothing … but gives you the general vibe”). His Zodiac Killer Project unmasks and spoofs the mechanics, the banality, of true crime. It’s a brilliant British send-up of an American obsession.
