Charlie Shackleton’s Zodiac Killer Project is a real odd duck in the true crime documentary sphere. The film outlines the rough sketches of a highway patrolman’s one-man-mission to catch The Zodiac Killer, but also simultaneously tears apart the true crime documentary format as we know it today. Part video essay, part investigative journalism, the heavy-meta doc peels back the curtain on the tricks of the trade and the reliably predictable tropes that have completely overtaken true-crime documentaries writ large.
In its earliest stages, Zodiac Killer Project was supposed to be a by-the-books true crime documentary like any other. Filmmaker Charlie Shackleton found his subject in Lyndon E. Lafferty who published a detailed account of his investigation in the book The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: AKA The Silenced Badge. After a chance encounter with a man that shared a striking resemblance to the notorious police sketch of The Zodiac Killer, Lafferty begins a years long investigation that is as cinematic as David Fincher’s Zodiac. Lafferty’s story is gripping and suspenseful, and a gold mine for any true crime documentary. Except…Shackleton wasn’t able to get the rights to his story from the Lafferty family.
“Tears apart the True Crime Format [peeling] back the curtain on the tricks of the trade and the reliably predictable tropes”
Faced with the death of a film that he had already committed time and energy and footage to, Shackleton turns the tables on the project and reworks the scraps of what could have been into something new and original that puts the entire genre under a microscope. It’s a great pivot, and makes for an endless parade of dissection in a space that has become a caricature of itself. “True Crime” used to just be another sub category of documentary filmmaking, but today’s True Crime has a language all its own and has snowballed into a juggernaut that towers over everything nonfiction. As Shackelton explains early in the film, True Crime has a gravitational pull in the documentary world that swallows up almost every working filmmaker at some point or another.
The irony of Zodiac Killer Project is that it’s skewering the same genre the filmmaker was attempting to break in to. During key sequences Shackleton giddily describes the scenes that he had already constructed, almost heartbroken over the loss of those ideas. But in the same breath he’s also picking apart the shortcomings (of which there are many!) and the silliness of the modern true crime documentary. Shackleton’s observations and critiques are all bullseyes, but the whole mess comes off as a little petty. The double-handed approach makes for a real he didn’t break-up with me, I broke up with him situation. It’s an honest and open (and often funny) discussion about how true crime stories are made…but based on Shackleton’s own descriptions of the planned project, it would it have looked indistinguishable from all the rest if it didn’t all fall apart in his hands right before it went into production.
“A cathartic laugh at True Crime’s expense”
Unfortunately, True crime isn’t going anywhere any time soon but Shackleton’s Zodiac Killer Project highlights the desperate need for a revamp. We’re never going to get tired of learning about our real-life boogeymen but I think we’re all a little sick of the template. The silver lining of Shackleton’s dead doc is that it gave him the ability to cut loose and break free of that template, bending the rules and dodging legal landmines to tell just enough of the story to get by, and to have a cathartic laugh at True Crime’s expense.
Charlie Shackleton’s Zodiac Killer Project celebrated its World Premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where it also picked up the Innovator Award. Click HERE to follow our continued coverage of the festival and share all your True Crime hot takes with us over in the Official Nightmare on Film Street Discord.
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