When David Fincher was a child growing up in the Bay Area — specifically in Marin County, due north across the Golden Gate’s majestic span – his parents briefly fretted about him riding the bus to elementary school. A boogeyman, who also happened to be a maniacal puppeteer of local news outlets, was on the loose. As Fincher has recalled in interviews, his father had told him as a seven-year-old, and in no uncertain terms: “There’s a serial killer who has killed four or five people, who calls himself Zodiac, who’s threatened to take a high-powered rifle and shoot out the tires of a school bus, and then shoot the children as they come off the bus.” This is the kind of terrifying memory that, like a branding iron, sears the brain of an impressionable youth and, in this case, a future blockbusting film director. It’s also, it turns out, the kind of permanent imprint that would eventually inspire an auteur’s career masterpiece.
Zodiac couldn’t be more different than Fincher’s previous serial killer movie, his 1995 breakthrough Se7en. Here’s the director’s first period piece, one that captured the moment when the optimism of the ‘60s soured into the paranoia of the ‘70s. It was also Fincher’s first foray into exclusively filming with a digital camera, a format that allowed him to recreate the look and feel of a specific era, with an obsessive eye for fidelity.
The other obvious way Zodiac differed from Se7en was its approach to the crime genre. The latter film was a work of pure fiction, featuring grisly murder tableaus that ended with a ghastly plot twist. Zodiac, instead, was a procedural less interested in dramatizing unusually horrific slayings (we’re grading on a curve here) and more concerned about the difficulty, if not impossibility, of solving an impenetrable puzzle in real life. (Indeed, the last murder we witness happens about 30 minutes into the picture.) Though our gumshoes are competent, and in one case dogged to a fault, no flesh-and-blood Hercule Poirot, Jessica Fletcher or Benoit Blanc exists to point a finger at a baddie with flourish and, in an extended monologue, methodically expose the murderer’s guilt. True crime doesn’t work that way. It’s often messy, ambiguous, maddening.
The film begins with the chilling Zodiac murders of 1969, when a young couple is attacked by a mysterious assailant on a secluded Lover’s Lane. This sets off a chain of events that includes the killer taunting the press and police with cryptic letters and serpentine ciphers, claiming responsibility for a cascade of murders. The film unfolds primarily through the perspectives of three central protagonists: Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal, fresh off of Brokeback Mountain), a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle; Paul Avery (pre-Iron Man Robert Downey Jr.), a journalist at the same newspaper; and detective Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo, at his career-best here) of the San Francisco Police Department.
As Zodiac’s killings escalate and the case becomes more complex, Graysmith, Avery and Toschi become increasingly obsessed with finding the perp and solving the mystery. Graysmith, in particular, emerges as the central figure consumed by the case, ultimately devoting years of his life to investigating Zodiac independently (he would literally write the two books this movie is based on). His relentless pursuit of the truth strains his relationship with his wife (played by Chloë Sevigny), and takes an increasing toll on his own mental well-being.
By the final act of the film, Graysmith fixes his attention on Arthur Leigh Allen (played by John Carroll Lynch, of Fargo fame) as the prime suspect. Lacking concrete evidence linking Allen to the murders (and in the face of dubious handwriting analyses that all but ruled him out), Graysmith still becomes convinced of Allen’s guilt, largely based on strong circumstantial clues and behavioral patterns. The film notably lacks a Scooby-Doo Reveal where Zodiac is unmasked and brought to justice. It does, however, contain a climactic scene that approaches the kind of catharsis a traditional whodunnit might provide.
It’s 1983 and Graysmith tracks down Allen, who’s working at an Ace Hardware store in Vallejo (in the vicinity of the film’s first dramatized murder act). Allen, not grasping who this customer is just yet, offers assistance. Graysmith declines, stone-faced and grave. The quarry suddenly recognizes his predator. One’s nemesis has arrived at last, and Allen delivers an almost imperceptible smirk (an admission of guilt?) in response. Graysmith simply turns and exits without a word.
Years later, the survivor of the Vallejo Lover’s Lane slaying points to an image of Allen, as the guilty party. But by then, it’s too late. Allen has perished on his own, of natural causes. The case remains open. That’s about as close as the film gets to, “Yeah, that one creepy guy we thought was Zodiac – well, he probably was.” To viewers who hate ambiguity and demand clear answers, Fincher ends the film with an almost puckish: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Audiences responded accordingly. Upon its release in the United States on March 2, 2007, Zodiac grossed approximately $13.4 million during its opening weekend, debuting at the number two spot behind Wild Hogs, the Tim Allen motorcycle buddy comedy. By the end of its theatrical run, the film had earned around $33 million domestically. Internationally, Zodiac garnered a cumulative worldwide gross of approximately $84 million, barely earning back its budget.
Many critics at the time recognized Zodiac was something akin to an instant classic. Roger Ebert gave the film a maximum of four stars, and said that “what makes Zodiac authentic is the way it avoids chases, shootouts, grandstanding and false climaxes, and just follows the methodical progress of police work.” This, mind you, was seven years before Serial summoned into existence countless amateur detectives. You can’t swing a bag today without hitting a Netflix series that “just follows the methodical process of police work,” something that was still utterly novel when Ebert wrote his review.
So, Zodiac feels decades ahead of its time, and as such, has aged into Fincher’s defining work. That’s in contrast to The Social Network, which felt so of the moment upon release, and now seems even more of a throwback than Zodiac. Between the two, if you’re counting Oscar nominations, The Social Network remains the more celebrated picture (eight nods compared to Zodiac’s giant goose egg). Time, on the other hand, has been kind to Fincher’s ‘07 epic, a triumph that endures as his most personal and elusive.
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