The
Zodiac Killer arguably inspired two of the nastiest copycats ever. At least the
New York and Kobe, Japan Zodiacs were eventually caught and unmasked. To this
today, the identity of San Francisco’s original Zodiac Killer remains a mystery.
Some assume (or hope) he has long since died, but the notorious serial killer
is about to come out of retirement in Jonathan Wright’s Awakening the Zodiac (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York.
Mick
Branson compulsively bids on unclaimed storage lockers, because it is the
irresponsible, reality-TV kind of thing to do. He thinks he and his pawn-shop
owning crony Harvey Something are onto a sure thing, but this locker turns out
to be complicated. There were not a lot of good re-sale items, but they did
find home movies of the Zodiac Killer stalking his prey. Harvey proposes using
the locker’s paper trail to track down the murderer and collect the $100,000
reward. Zoe Branson recognizes a bad idea when she hears one, but she
reluctantly agrees, because they need the money.
Unbeknownst
to the Bransons, the Zodiac Killer is still quite spry and rather put out that
the storage company sold his unit out from under him after only three weeks
(actually, our three amateur sleuths totally agree with him on that one). While
the Bransons noisily chase down leads and Harvey Who sets his mind on cracking
the cryptic coded messages the killer left behind to taunt the police, the
genuine Zodiac gets back into the killing habit.
Straddling
horror and mystery, Awakening is a
nifty character-driven genre film that smartly incorporates the known facts and
established urban legends surrounding the Zodiac case. The Bibbs are also a dim-witted
but brightly appealing couple, who are easy to root for. It is sort of like
watching Jeff Bridges and Kim Bassinger in Robert Benton’s Nadine get caught up in an exponentially more sinister caper.
Matt
Craven supplies the perfect counter-point as the colorfully anti-social Harvey
X. Kenneth Welsh from Twin Peaks and
Nicholas Campbell and Stephen McHattie, both from Canada, also add plenty of
creepiness in their suspicious supporting roles. Indeed, the entire cast
clearly enjoys the crisp, sardonic dialogue written by Wright, Jennifer Archer,
and Mike Horrigan.
