Zodiac Killer Project

2025

Action / Crime / Documentary / Mystery

1
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 90% · 68 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 90%
IMDb Rating 6.3/10 10 338 338

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Plot summary

Against the backdrop of deserted spaces, a filmmaker explores his abandoned Zodiac Killer documentary, delving into the true crime genre's inner workings at a saturation point.

Director

Charlie Lyne Photo
Charlie Lyne

Top cast

Lee Nicholas Harris Photo
Lee Nicholas Harris as Tucker
Guy Robbins Photo
Guy Robbins as Lyndon
Charlie Lyne Photo
Charlie Lyne as Self - Narrator
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB 1080p.WEB
843.65 MB
1280*694
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us   ca   es  
23.976 fps
1 hr 31 min
Seeds 47
1.53 GB
1920*1040
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us   ca   es  
23.976 fps
1 hr 31 min
Seeds 93
1.37 GB
1920*1040
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us   ca   es  
23.976 fps
1 hr 31 min
Seeds 22

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by peter0969 8 / 10

An interesting documentary approach about the Zodiac Killer

Watched at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.Charlie Shackleton has crafted a strange essay-like documentary about a tale of a movie that never existed, using both random footage around the landscapes, commentary, and archival footage to express his views and ideas about the concept. It's truly fascinating because Shackleton has created some interesting works in his career and while this one is just as experimental as his usual works, it offers a good insight to the true crime doc subgenera with a fresh perspective, and a good sense of self-awareness about it's morality, ideas, and environment.Shackleton offers out good points about the issues with modern crime doc-genres and placing with both it's critiques and concepts together, it becomes more of a personal essay journey of reflection and cinematic making. Presented with some great visual presentations, sound designs and musical score, it becomes personal and investing. A exploration that something that will never happen, to be imagined.Therefore, I say it's an experience.
Reviewed by scottishgeekguy 8 / 10

Fresh Blood in the True Crime Doc Genre

(Transcribed from YouTube Review)The Zodiac Killer Project. Now let's read the, um, the wee blurb here. So this again was part of the Out Of Competition strand. "When plans to make his own true crime film fall through at the last minute, Charlie Shackleton turns the camera back on himself to examine the tropes, seductions, and shock tactics of a problematic yet extremely popular genre. Countless films have been made about the Zodiac Killer, but Shackleton's meta-documentary doubles as a critical tribute to true crime, shining a light on the manipulative morally dubious and often plain ridiculous ways in which these films play or play with our paranoia and voyeurism." I really, really enjoyed this one.It's, uh From my mind, from my memory, it's the first documentary about a failed documentary. There's been quite a good few movies, documentaries made about failed movies. Um, Terry Gilliam's Don Quixote movie is the first one that springs to mind.I am sure there's been others, but this is the first one where I can think of where it's documentary about the failed making of a documentary. Uh, it's essentially Charlie sitting in a recording booth describing how his movie would have looked. Um, so it's kind of like you're watching the director's commentary track to a movie that never actually, never actually got made.Um, if I just jump into my notes here, um, there's a line from the movie that says, "The gravitational pull of true crime." And that, um, that kind of stands out. I suppose that's, that's the main point of this movie because there's so many of these movies and TV shows on, let's face it, on Netflix. Netflix is full of true crime documentaries. It's definitely a It's definitely a popular genre.It's not actually a genre that I'm massively fond of. I've watched a few of them, but I don't, I don't, you know, um, hoover up every single, uh, true crime documentary that's, that's out there. But I have, I have watched a few. Uh, it's a, it's a really clever deconstruction of the modern true crime documentary. Um, it even goes as far as to criticize some of the recent fictionalized versions of them.The Jeffrey Dahmer one, for example. But in the same breath, Charlie criticizes it, but then also says how good it was made. Um, and he's got a point because I think a lot of the backlash for that Jeffrey Dahmer series on Netflix was, you know, it spends 7 episodes showing you in gory detail what he did. But then in the 8th episode, it kind of like says, "You shouldn't glamorize it.You shouldn't even be watching it." But then you're like, "Well, you just made this documentary." Sorry. "You just made this series." And a good series it was. So that was quite interesting. Um, another interesting element of that documentary is Charlie is very much a faceless voice for half of the movie. He just You don't see him until halfway through, and then when you do finally see him, it's quite sparingly used.So editorially like wise, it's quite an interesting technique because he's obviously got a lot to say about this because he spent, you know, months or years of his life trying to get this documentary made and then it never got made, and then he sat in a recording booth and basically, you know, let his brain empty onto the, onto the screen, or onto the mic and he described how his movie would have looked and how it would have played out. So again, a very clever meta deconstruction of modern day true crime documentaries.I did have a sit down interview with Charlie that I'll be editing and uploading within next, the next week or so, so I'll put that in the description below as well. It's, uh Again, this one's about 90 minutes. In fact, it says it there. Hour and 35 minutes. It's a good length. It doesn't feel too long.It was probably one of the ones that I would potentially watch again after the, um, after the festival. I don't know if it's going to be getting released. Um, I think the, the massive irony would be if this does get released on Netflix and it sits alongside all of the documentaries that it essentially, um, has a go at for their kind of, you know, voyeuristic, manipulative, morally dubious and often plain ridiculous ways in which these films play with our paranoia and voyeurism.That was me reading from the blurb on the website, the blurb on the website from Manuela Lazic, Lasic? Apologies if I'm butchering that name. But yeah, that was the, uh, The Zodiac Killer Project directed by Charlie Shackleton.
Reviewed by bob_meg 10 / 10

Less about the Zodiac and more about your own tunnel vision re: true crime

First off, if you're watching this to figure out who the Zodiac is, don't bother. The End.But... if you're interested in exploring the tropes and prejudices of true crime and how they can lure you into dead zones at 3 AM, or for the rest of your life, this might be for you.Brit Charlie Shackleton's Zodiac Killer Project originally sets out to focus on a suspect who goes under the pseudonym George Russell Tucker. If you've never heard of Tucker... there are plenty of good reasons why. Most Zodiac-heads dismiss Tucker very quickly.Why? A cop named Lyndon Lafferty, based largely on insider knowledge of a conspiracy theory in local government, became convinced that Tucker was the Zodiac as early as 1970. But most of his "evidence" was based largely on intuition (and perhaps some obsession), and any hard-core facts (how Lafferty supposedly solved the Zodiac cyphers, the name of his suspect and countless other more tangible bits of information), died with him shortly after he published a book explaining his theories called The Zodiac Coverup, in 2012.As a reputable podcaster on Black Box Radio succinctly put it, Lafferty's theories are plausible if "they stay inside a neat bubble".... in other words, one constructed by Lafferty. And like it or not, it's the rabbit hole many of us go down without even knowing it, when getting absorbed into a true crime book, podcast, or film.Shackleton's film was compelling and entertaining in that he consistently highlighted these "hooks" and fallacies we all fall on, for, and into... and the Zodiac case, being close to unsolvable, virtually tailors itself to this self-feeding scenario.I personally did not know that much about Tucker as a suspect, and the stories of Lafferty's investigation are intriguing. His faith in Tucker as the Zodiac is total.Will I read Lafferty's book? Undeniably. Will it change my thinking regarding my favorite suspect. Probably not. But it gives you a cool insight into your not-so-objective obsessions, and I really enjoyed the self-analysis.
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