Many who've reviewed "Zodiac" have emphasized its continuities with earlier David Fincher projects -- the virtuosic camera movement, put to such excellent effect in the many shots of the SF Chronicle newsroom or the SFPD offices in "Zodiac," was already evident in "Se7en" and "Panic Room," the creepy interiors of the subjects under investigation, their mise en scène contributing so perfectly to the growing atmosphere of dread as the investigation in "Zodiac" devolves from dead-end to dead-end, almost stole the show from Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, and Kevin Spacey in "Se7en."
What has been underappreciated, however, has been the way in which -- unlike his earlier movies -- "Zodiac" succeeds where few other serial-killer films have in portraying the callous, senseless cruelty of the killer's crimes. So many serial-killer films (including, to some extent, "Se7en," or "The Silence of the Lambs" and its sequels) make the killer so fascinating that he becomes an object of identification for the audience -- a modern-day Miltonic Satan. Particularly in the portrayal of the second murder of the film (whose details I'll avoid so as not to spoil it for those who have not yet seen it), however, Fincher demonstrates the horror of the crime, while managing -- through a masterful, flat, filmic style that underscores the unintelligibility of the Zodiac's crime -- to prevent any inadvertent identification of the audience with the killer.
The other aspect of the film that works particularly well is the way that it works against type. The traditional serial-killer narrative is just that -- a narrative, with all of the narrative conventions of a developmental arc. The emotional highs of this film, however, are all front-loaded; what follows the series of murders with which the Zodiac killer made his name are years of fruitless investigation and frustrated leads. Unlike other films, "Zodiac" thus recapitulates for the viewer the feeling of drowning in the amassed evidence, of not knowing one's way through, of following out blind alleys, and investing one's credence in misleading clues. The viewer feels what it is like to become so overwhelmed by the hopelessness of finding a solution that one might be willing to avoid contravening evidence -- or even to hope that the police would even manufacture evidence -- only so that the story can achieve a satisfactory conclusion.
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