It has been 12 years since he made Seven, the director’s seminal serial-killer chiller. And there have been so many imitators since — each straining to up the cliches and carnage — you wonder why Fincher, with today’s release of the fact-based Zodiac, would return to the territory he helped pioneer, one now populated by murderers whose ridiculous death traps are so intricate they must subscribe to the same Acme Co. that supplies Wile E. Coyote.
What further shocks and squirms could he possibly have left to goose from audiences?
The surprise of Zodiac — and a daring one at that, since it will probably put off the blood-thirsty masses — is that it is at least as much a police procedural, and a study of self-destructive single-mindedness, as it is a thriller. Info-fetishists and lovers of cinema will be captivated, even if snuff fans will be snoozing.
But then, considering the real-life investigation became, for all involved, a source of confounding frustration — the Zodiac killer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s and 1970s was never identified — why should the film leave audiences any less unnerved?
Spanning 22 years in the lives of its characters over a meaty two hours and 40 minutes, Zodiac is a thicket of knotted dead-ends and undead obsessions. That’s likely what attracted Fincher, the technical master behind Fight Club and Panic Room.
As he demonstrated with Seven, Fincher favours monsters whose faces are seldom, if at all, seen, and whose motives are never easily explained. And what more unknown a monster is there than a serial murderer who taunted police but was never captured?
In this regard, Zodiac himself perfectly encapsulates Fincher’s fascination with the toil that figments of fear can wage on society’s soul, and on an individual’s sanity.
Fincher is also, as his visual style attests, a devil for details. With Zodiac, he immerses the audience not just in a blinding slipstream of data taken from the actual case files, but in pitch-perfect period detail.
It begins in July 1969 in Vallejo, Calif., when a young couple parked on a deserted road are savagely gunned down by a killer who would later identify himself as The Zodiac in letters he wrote to the San Francisco Chronicle.
It is at the Chronicle where the Zodiac case draws in two disparate personalities: Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), a cartoonist whose fascination with puzzles attracts him to the Zodiac’s coded messages; and Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), a booze-soaked crime reporter who becomes a potential target himself.
More killings follow, including that of a San Francisco taxi driver, which sees homicide inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) enter an investigation already hampered by the location of the murders. Because the Zodiac committed his crimes in different jurisdictions, there is little-to-no communication between police departments, effectively bungling the chances of ever pinning down a suspect.
The lack of proper denouement — a knowing stare between hunter and hunted is all Fincher grants us in the film’s final moments — runs contrary to both Hollywood logic and the fundamental principle of the mystery genre in which order is restored from chaos.
Although the screenplay by James Vanderbilt (based on Greysmith’s non-fiction Zodiac books, published in the 1980s) clearly fingers one of the prime suspects as the probable killer, there is no arrest, no clash of violent release, no measure of peace, to quell the anxiety Fincher and his excellent cast has so exactingly generated.
And in denying filmgoers everything they expect from the genre he helped define, Fincher has made what may very well be his masterpiece.
You can’t begrudge David Fincher for once putting Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in a box.
It has been 12 years since he made Seven, the director’s seminal serial-killer chiller. And there have been so many imitators since — each straining to up the cliches and carnage — you wonder why Fincher, with today’s release of the fact-based Zodiac, would return to the territory he helped pioneer, one now populated by murderers whose ridiculous death traps are so intricate they must subscribe to the same Acme Co. that supplies Wile E. Coyote.
What further shocks and squirms could he possibly have left to goose from audiences?
The surprise of Zodiac — and a daring one at that, since it will probably put off the blood-thirsty masses — is that it is at least as much a police procedural, and a study of self-destructive single-mindedness, as it is a thriller. Info-fetishists and lovers of cinema will be captivated, even if snuff fans will be snoozing.
But then, considering the real-life investigation became, for all involved, a source of confounding frustration — the Zodiac killer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s and 1970s was never identified — why should the film leave audiences any less unnerved?
Spanning 22 years in the lives of its characters over a meaty two hours and 40 minutes, Zodiac is a thicket of knotted dead-ends and undead obsessions. That’s likely what attracted Fincher, the technical master behind Fight Club and Panic Room.
As he demonstrated with Seven, Fincher favours monsters whose faces are seldom, if at all, seen, and whose motives are never easily explained. And what more unknown a monster is there than a serial murderer who taunted police but was never captured?
In this regard, Zodiac himself perfectly encapsulates Fincher’s fascination with the toil that figments of fear can wage on society’s soul, and on an individual’s sanity.
Fincher is also, as his visual style attests, a devil for details. With Zodiac, he immerses the audience not just in a blinding slipstream of data taken from the actual case files, but in pitch-perfect period detail.
It begins in July 1969 in Vallejo, Calif., when a young couple parked on a deserted road are savagely gunned down by a killer who would later identify himself as The Zodiac in letters he wrote to the San Francisco Chronicle.
It is at the Chronicle where the Zodiac case draws in two disparate personalities: Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), a cartoonist whose fascination with puzzles attracts him to the Zodiac’s coded messages; and Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), a booze-soaked crime reporter who becomes a potential target himself.
More killings follow, including that of a San Francisco taxi driver, which sees homicide inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) enter an investigation already hampered by the location of the murders. Because the Zodiac committed his crimes in different jurisdictions, there is little-to-no communication between police departments, effectively bungling the chances of ever pinning down a suspect.
The lack of proper denouement — a knowing stare between hunter and hunted is all Fincher grants us in the film’s final moments — runs contrary to both Hollywood logic and the fundamental principle of the mystery genre in which order is restored from chaos.
Although the screenplay by James Vanderbilt (based on Greysmith’s non-fiction Zodiac books, published in the 1980s) clearly fingers one of the prime suspects as the probable killer, there is no arrest, no clash of violent release, no measure of peace, to quell the anxiety Fincher and his excellent cast has so exactingly generated.
And in denying filmgoers everything they expect from the genre he helped define, Fincher has made what may very well be his masterpiece.
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It has been 12 years since he made Seven, the director’s seminal serial-killer chiller. And there have been so many imitators since — each straining to up the cliches and carnage — you wonder why Fincher, with today’s release of the fact-based Zodiac, would return to the territory he helped pioneer, one now populated by murderers whose ridiculous death traps are so intricate they must subscribe to the same Acme Co. that supplies Wile E. Coyote.
What further shocks and squirms could he possibly have left to goose from audiences?
The surprise of Zodiac — and a daring one at that, since it will probably put off the blood-thirsty masses — is that it is at least as much a police procedural, and a study of self-destructive single-mindedness, as it is a thriller. Info-fetishists and lovers of cinema will be captivated, even if snuff fans will be snoozing.
But then, considering the real-life investigation became, for all involved, a source of confounding frustration — the Zodiac killer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s and 1970s was never identified — why should the film leave audiences any less unnerved?
Spanning 22 years in the lives of its characters over a meaty two hours and 40 minutes, Zodiac is a thicket of knotted dead-ends and undead obsessions. That’s likely what attracted Fincher, the technical master behind Fight Club and Panic Room.
As he demonstrated with Seven, Fincher favours monsters whose faces are seldom, if at all, seen, and whose motives are never easily explained. And what more unknown a monster is there than a serial murderer who taunted police but was never captured?
In this regard, Zodiac himself perfectly encapsulates Fincher’s fascination with the toil that figments of fear can wage on society’s soul, and on an individual’s sanity.
Fincher is also, as his visual style attests, a devil for details. With Zodiac, he immerses the audience not just in a blinding slipstream of data taken from the actual case files, but in pitch-perfect period detail.
It begins in July 1969 in Vallejo, Calif., when a young couple parked on a deserted road are savagely gunned down by a killer who would later identify himself as The Zodiac in letters he wrote to the San Francisco Chronicle.
It is at the Chronicle where the Zodiac case draws in two disparate personalities: Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), a cartoonist whose fascination with puzzles attracts him to the Zodiac’s coded messages; and Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), a booze-soaked crime reporter who becomes a potential target himself.
More killings follow, including that of a San Francisco taxi driver, which sees homicide inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) enter an investigation already hampered by the location of the murders. Because the Zodiac committed his crimes in different jurisdictions, there is little-to-no communication between police departments, effectively bungling the chances of ever pinning down a suspect.
The lack of proper denouement — a knowing stare between hunter and hunted is all Fincher grants us in the film’s final moments — runs contrary to both Hollywood logic and the fundamental principle of the mystery genre in which order is restored from chaos.
Although the screenplay by James Vanderbilt (based on Greysmith’s non-fiction Zodiac books, published in the 1980s) clearly fingers one of the prime suspects as the probable killer, there is no arrest, no clash of violent release, no measure of peace, to quell the anxiety Fincher and his excellent cast has so exactingly generated.
And in denying filmgoers everything they expect from the genre he helped define, Fincher has made what may very well be his masterpiece.
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