First Look ’25: Zodiac Killer Project

The Zodiac Killer remains America’s deadliest uncaught serial killer, so any half-baked theory about his identity deserves a Netflix documentary. At least that is what documentary filmmaker Charlie Shackleton (probably rightly) figured. Deciding to essentially “sell out” and go true crime, Shackleton tried to buy the rights to a former California highway patrolman’s expose/memoir of his off-the-books Zodiac investigation. The negotiation went smoothly until the rights-holders suddenly backed out. Undeterred, Shackleton explains the film he would have made, using material already in the public domain in Zodiac Killer Project, a sort of docu-curio that screens during this year’s First Look.

By the time the deal unexpectedly fell through Shackleton had already done a lot of prep work, including scouting locations and pre-interviewing potential on-camera subjects. The focus of his film would have been the late Lyndon Lafferty, who had a fateful encounter at a rest stop with the man who would become his prime suspect for the Zodiac murders.

Ordinarily, Highway Patrol is not in charge of serial killer investigations, but the police took his information and started sniffing around his suspect, until higher-ups declared him off limits. Considering this a cover-up, Lafferty assembled his own team, largely consisting of retired law enforcement friends, who worked the case without official sanction.

In fact, that sounds like a very commercial premise, so it is easy to understand why Shackleton thought his unmade Zodiac Killer Project could have been a nice payday. Basically, he explains shot-by-shot, what might have been. The visuals are mostly static shots of prospective locations, like the library that would have served as the police station.

Frankly, the real revelation in Zodiac Killer Project are the ways Shackleton quite offhandedly admits he would have deceived viewers and distorted the truth, for dramatic effect. For instance, he causally admits he would have implied Lafferty had been present for his suspect’s first police interview, even though he seriously doubts that was true. It just would have made better TV.

Shackleton also skewers the very genre he hoped to join, illustrating each of his hypothetical scenes with half of dozen split screens from previous true crime productions that show nearly identical imagery. It starts with the grainy, dreamlike opening credits and precedes to the description of the suspect’s hometown as “a nice play to raise a family,” but it always “had a dark side.” Plus, every other cop is nicknamed “the Bulldog.”

Ironically, there is practically no discussion of the Zodiac murders. Although Shackleton describes Lafferty’s suspect at length, he openly doubts his guilt. Instead, this film is about the conventions of the genre and the weird ways Shackleton allowed Lafferty to get inside his head. It is another very strange Zodiac side-story. Indeed, Zodiac Killer Project would make an eccentric but fitting double-feature with Tom Hanson’s notorious let’s-find-the-Zodiac exploitation movie, The Zodiac Killer (1971).

Watching Zodiac Killer Project should permanently dissuade viewers from ever assuming something is true just because they saw it in a documentary. Maybe that was not Shackleton’s goal, but promoting such skepticism is definitely healthy. Recommended for its deconstruction of documentary filmmaking, Zodiac Killer Project screens tomorrow (3/15) as part of First Look ’25.