Why “Zodiac” is still the best true crime film of all time

How do you make a film about a true story with no ending? That is the narrative challenge that exists in any film about the infamous Zodiac Killer, who terrorized California's Bay Area in the 1960s and 1970s. There are seemingly two ways to meet this challenge: Either you leave the loose ends open or you draw your own conclusions. Or, if you Zodiac (now streaming on Peacock), you can do both.

David Fincher's novel was published in 2007 and is based on the book of the same name by Robert Graysmith. Zodiac is considered one of the filmmaker's finest achievements in nearly 20 years, a terrifying and masterfully executed period drama with a faceless monster at its center. Fincher's legendary attention to detail is on full display in this film, transporting us all back to 1970s San Francisco with unusual force, and the film's recreations of the Zodiac's crimes are truly terrifying. But there's more to Zodiac as reenactments and skillfully assembled period details. In Fincher's hands, the film becomes not only a great document of a true crime story, but also an astonishing portrait of obsession and the effects of violence, making it the best true crime film of all time.

Zodiac's atmosphere of true terror

With the possible exception of Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac Killer is considered the most iconic of all unidentified serial killers, in part because he cultivated an image of himself in the press, through ciphers, phone calls, and, in one unforgettable case, an all-black killer suit described by one of his potential victims. Anyone with even the slightest interest in true crime knows the name, symbols, and dark aura of the figure this killer created in the public eye. It is so ubiquitous that one hardly has to do anything to conjure it up, and as proof: ZodiacIn the first murder sequence of “The Killer,” the killer is shown from a distance and our imagination is left to do much of the work.

But Zodiac wants to dig deeper than our ideas about the killer and his dark deeds. The first death scene, like other key death scenes in the film, was shot with the goal of digging deep into the victims' experiences. We don't watch from afar or get only fleeting glimpses, as might be the case in a true crime documentary. We are transported right into the car, to the lake, to the streets of San Francisco, and we understand that these are ordinary people whose lives are suddenly and often horribly upended.

Nowhere is this more evident than in one of the most terrifying scenes in 21st century cinema to date: the Zodiac's attack on a couple at Lake Berryessa as they relax on a hill. This is the scene where the killer's iconic black hood comes into play, and while this image is striking, what really sticks with you about this scene is the clear portrayal of the Zodiac not as a superhuman specter of unimaginable menace, but as a guy who simply decided to cause this damage. There is something mundane about the way he goes about his work, an abruptness that makes it all the more shocking, and this understanding of Zodiac as a man who chose to do these terrible things is an important piece of the filmmaking puzzle, because Zodiac digs deeper into the mystery of why and who.

The unsolvable riddle at the heart of Zodiac

Most Zodiac plays from the perspective of Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle with a penchant for puzzles, who soon develops a fascination with the Zodiac as it sends coded messages to the newspaper. Graysmith isn't a crime reporter or investigator, or anyone else of that sort, but the code draws him in. He sees something fascinating in the symbols laid out by the Zodiac and soon finds himself itching to get involved, working the newspaper's crime reporter, Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), in search of new information.

Graysmith's keen sense of mystery and hunger for new details about the Zodiac persist throughout the film as he delves deeper into the mystery, treating each twist as a new piece of the code, a new symbol that must be deciphered to fit into the bigger picture. What begins as a sort of dark hobby, an endorphin-inducing quest to make progress on something that has caught his attention, soon develops into a full-blown obsession that consumes years of Graysmith's life as he grows ever closer to his own preferred suspect, a man named Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch).

As we follow Graysmith, we see how his obsession affects his family, how it leads to a strained relationship with Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) of the San Francisco Police Department, and how the mysteries surrounding the Zodiac's existence create new codes and new labyrinths throughout his life. Here is Zodiac becomes particularly effective not only as a true crime drama but also as a commentary on true crime. Every true crime fan knows the feeling of clinging to a particularly insidious, complex case, the feeling that every answer leads to 20 more questions, the feeling of getting lost in the details that is both confusing and exciting. In the case of Zodiacthese details are so profound that even when Graysmith thinks he's solved the case, he can't decipher the entire code. It's an unsolvable mystery, and that's what makes it both fascinating and devastating.

The unspoken crimes

All of these elements are very precise and lifelike, in keeping with Fincher's style of filmmaking, which has sometimes led to Fincher being seen as a cold filmmaker whose obsessions and drive leave emotional scars in the editing room. Zodiacrefutes this idea despite all the detail and precision, because it is not just about the crimes we see. It is about the crimes we never talk about.

We are fascinated by the Zodiac Killer, whoever he was and wherever he is now. As with many other murderers and monsters in history, we lose ourselves in the maelstrom of his actions, his words, his insults. He sets us in motion, threatens to pull us into the depths, and what Zodiac What it tells us eloquently is that for some people, this vortex is not temporary. For people like Graysmith and Toschi, people like Zodiac's surviving victims, this vortex will never stop. The lives Zodiac has destroyed, or at least changed forever, are not just those of the people he attacked. The obsession over what he did has trampled countless lives, and if we can't break free from his darkness, we may join them. It's a raw, deep, disturbing emotional well at the center of this gripping true-crime saga, and it helps Zodiac a masterpiece.

Zodiac is now streaming on Peacock. For more on the Zodiac case, check out the Peacock original documentary series The Myth of The Zodiac Killer.