Why Zodi­ac remains David Fincher’s most puz­zling masterpiece

Fire­works pop in the night sky over the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area. A Chevro­let Cor­vair – win­dows down, ​‘Easy to be Hard’ pour­ing from the stereo – rolls through a Valle­jo sub­urb hum­ming with 4^th of July fes­tiv­i­ties. Mar­ried wait­ress Dar­lene Fer­rin picks up her friend Michael Mageau and they dri­ve togeth­er to a Mr Ed’s restau­rant for burg­ers and fries. It’s too crowd­ed, so they car­ry on to a qui­et lovers’ lane on the edge of town.

There, a gang of row­dy jocks in a pick­up hurl fire­crack­ers at Darlene’s bumper; Michael shouts brave­ly from the win­dow: ​“Fuck off and die.” Anoth­er car emerges from the dark Colum­bus Park­way, lingers for a moment behind the Cor­vair and pulls away. Sec­onds lat­er, it screech­es to a halt, swings one-eighty and returns. A fig­ure walks calm­ly from the driver’s side of the vehi­cle to the passenger’s side of Darlene’s. He flash­es a torch in Michael’s face and unleash­es a del­uge from a 9mm Luger. So begins Zodi­ac, a cool and com­pelling true-crime thriller that turns ten this month and remains David Fincher’s best.

The Zodi­ac Killer rose to fame in 1969 when, imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the shoot­ing of Fer­rin and Mageau in the park­ing lot at Blue Rock Springs, the Valle­jo Police Depart­ment received an anony­mous phone call. In a slow and rehearsed monot­o­ne, the caller con­fessed to the night’s crimes and also took cred­it for the mur­ders of two high school stu­dents the year before. Three weeks lat­er, three San Fran­cis­co papers each received a let­ter con­tain­ing one third of a cryp­togram that the sender, who lat­er called him­self ​“the Zodi­ac”, said would, if solved, reveal his identity.

It didn’t. Sub­se­quent let­ters detail­ing unre­leased infor­ma­tion about the crimes did, how­ev­er, seem to con­firm his cul­pa­bil­i­ty, and a mod­ern-day Jack the Rip­per-like exchange ensued. It’s as if the Big Smoke of the Vic­to­ri­an era had col­lid­ed and merged with the free-lov­ing Fog City. The mys­te­ri­ous cor­re­spon­dent laid claim to as many as 37 homi­cides between 1968 and 1974 and deliv­ered a cat­a­logue of hideous threats to the pub­lic, includ­ing one par­tic­u­lar­ly men­ac­ing remark: ​“I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morn­ing. Just shoot out the front tire [and] then pick off the kid­dies as they come bounc­ing out.”

Finch­er grew up in the Bay Area at the time of the Zodiac’s reign of ter­ror and has pre­vi­ous­ly recalled how a patrol car once trailed his bus jour­ney to school. When he asked his father why, he had the Zodiac’s blood-cur­dling threats relayed to him. He also remem­bers the day his par­ents packed up and moved away, and he watched his home­town dis­ap­pear through the back win­dow, won­der­ing whether or not the police had ever caught ​“that Zodi­ac guy” – the boo­gie­man who taunt­ed the author­i­ties and tor­ment­ed the pub­lic for so long.

As such, Zodi­ac seems a project close to its director’s heart – a strange notion, giv­en its mor­bid con­tent. But Finch­er is no ordi­nary direc­tor, espe­cial­ly when it comes to thrillers, and his 2007 offer­ing is the per­fect illus­tra­tion of his sin­gu­lar mas­tery of the genre. He oper­ates as much like a mur­der inves­ti­ga­tor as a film­mak­er, tak­ing a metic­u­lous, even obses­sive approach, with extra­or­di­nary atten­tion to detail. Every inch counts, as demon­strat­ed by the strange fact he had real trees erect­ed at one of the mur­der scenes in order to cor­rect the slight­ly altered topog­ra­phy and achieve his desired lev­el of authen­tic­i­ty. There’s also the exquis­ite visu­al style that cap­tures the era beau­ti­ful­ly; take, for instance, the tan­ger­ine car­pet and match­ing paint job of a movie-the­atre foyer.

The film tells the sto­ry from the points of view of those caught up in the storm: Robert Gray­smith, a car­toon­ist at the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle – and a true-crime enthu­si­ast with a pas­sion for puz­zles – who became whol­ly immersed in the case; Graysmith’s friend and col­league Paul Avery, a boozy, eccen­tric jour­nal­ist who cov­ered the Zodi­ac and was the direct recip­i­ent of one of his let­ters; and Dave Toschi and his part­ner, the homi­cide inspec­tors charged with catch­ing the killer and free­ing the state of his fury.

Fol­low­ing the mur­der and seri­ous wound­ing of Fer­rin and Mageau, respec­tive­ly, Finch­er focus­es on the suc­ceed­ing crimes that the author­i­ties were con­fi­dent the Zodi­ac per­pe­trat­ed: the stab­bing of a young cou­ple at Lake Berryessa and the exe­cu­tion of cab-dri­ver Paul Stine in Pre­sidio Heights. Cou­pled with the let­ters and ter­ri­fy­ing threats there­in, the events stirred the Bay Area into a state of fren­zy, which Finch­er por­trays perfectly.

The first part of the film is struc­tured almost like a dis­as­ter movie: it’s as if some­thing apoc­a­lyp­tic is hap­pen­ing. Con­stant reminders of how much time has past since the last mur­der, or let­ter to the press, serve to ramp up the anx­i­ety. Pub­lic dread grows like a tidal wave approach­ing the San Fran­cis­co shore­line. At one point, Gray­smith is dri­ving along with his kid, switch­ing radio sta­tions in a futile attempt to escape news of the Zodi­ac, when sud­den­ly a heli­copter pro­peller starts ham­mer­ing in the skies above, hint­ing at the extent of the moral pan­ic tak­ing hold.

Then it slows down, at least as far as the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion is con­cerned, with Gray­smith, Avery and Toschi left tread­ing in the wake. Cue the film’s meat: 2000-plus sus­pects, com­mu­ni­ca­tion laps­es between police juris­dic­tions, new let­ters, war­rant appli­ca­tions, fake let­ters, red her­rings, umpteen hand­writ­ing tests, rela­tion­ship break­downs, alco­holism and obses­sion – com­plete and utter obses­sion. While Toschi and Avery even­tu­al­ly fall by the way­side, Gray­smith, free from the admin­is­tra­tive pres­sures placed on the oth­ers, con­tin­ues the inves­ti­ga­tion with the inten­tion of writ­ing a book – lay­ing out all the evi­dence in the hope that, if not him or the police, the pub­lic will solve the case.

The book sold mil­lions and reignit­ed inter­est in the Zodi­ac, but it took its toll. Gray­smith, for all intents and pur­pos­es, wrote him­self into the nar­ra­tive, even more so than Avery before him. With an apart­ment packed to the rafters with files, ciphers and all the junk in between the­o­ries, the car­toon­ist com­mits him­self body and soul to the project. It’s almost inevitable that the killer would start to call, wheez­ing down the line in the ear­ly hours. But Gray­smith is not to be deterred; he wants only to ​“look him in the eye and… know that it’s him.”

This acci­den­tal and invig­o­rat­ing meta ele­ment is height­ened by the roles of film and lit­er­a­ture as moti­va­tion for the Zodi­ac. His crimes were inspired by ​‘The Most Dan­ger­ous Game’, a 1924 Richard Con­nell short sto­ry that was made into a movie in 1932. The point of the sto­ry, which is about a hunter who grows so bored of killing ani­mals that he turns his atten­tion to peo­ple, is that ​“man is the most dan­ger­ous ani­mal of all”. In one of his let­ters, the Zodi­ac also refers to Ter­rence Malick’s Bad­lands; in anoth­er he asks who will play him in the movie he’s wait­ing for; and then there’s Dirty Har­ry, which drew on the Zodi­ac case in 1971.

Cul­tur­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions and col­lec­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion are inte­gral to the Zodiac’s tale; and it’s as if Finch­er took up the baton from Gray­smith, assum­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for gen­er­at­ing new inter­est and even, if some reports are to be believed, uncov­er­ing new evi­dence. Like Gray­smith, Finch­er – who had total, unprece­dent­ed access to the case files – points his fin­ger most accus­ing­ly at Arthur Leigh Allen, a creepy deviant with heaps of cir­cum­stan­tial proof stacked against him. In one of the film’s best scenes, Toschi and com­pa­ny ques­tion him in a run­down, indus­tri­al cafe­te­ria of some Valle­jo oil com­pa­ny. The encounter peaks with the suspect’s chill­ing dec­la­ra­tion: ​“I’m not the Zodi­ac, and if I was I cer­tain­ly wouldn’t tell you.”

Though hor­ri­fy­ing, Fincher’s depic­tion of Allen is essen­tial­ly down-to-earth and real­is­tic. It man­ages – assum­ing, per­haps naive­ly, that he was guilty – to crack at least part of the myth­i­cal exte­ri­or of the Zodi­ac, mak­ing the mon­ster almost human, pathet­i­cal­ly so. It’s one of the most inter­est­ing aspects of the film.

Per­for­mance-wise, Jake Gyl­len­haal is excel­lent as Gray­smith, the bleary-eyed, inor­di­nate­ly dri­ven for­mer Eagle Scout, while Robert Downey Jr is at his sar­don­ic – and even­tu­al­ly skit­tish and para­noid – best as Avery. The dia­logue between the two brings con­sid­er­able warmth to this oth­er­wise cold, talk-heavy case file study. But it’s Ruf­fa­lo, in his usu­al periph­er­al part, who steals the show with his por­tray­al of the charis­mat­ic Toschi. He’s done the affa­ble-but-deter­mined detec­tive very well before – in Jane Campion’s In the Cut, no less – but here he’s exceptional.

Zodi­ac, then, is a film in which near enough every­thing works. It’s a mur­der mys­tery about what hap­pens when equi­lib­ri­um is not restored. It’s anti-Holmes, anti-Marple and anti-Mar­lowe: it’s anti-make believe. This is real, and when the real is as grip­ping and ter­ri­fy­ing as the sto­ry of the Zodi­ac Killer, it enthrals in a way that fic­tion can’t. You may have to go as far back as Richard Brooks’ ​‘In Cold Blood’ to find a supe­ri­or true-crime thriller. A decade since its release, Zodi­ac is still David Fincher’s masterpiece.