Why David Fincher's Zodiac became a comforting rewatch

David Fincher’s Zodiac — a film about the Zodiac killer who terrorised California’s Bay Area that opens with multiple murders and a coded letter — has become the writer’s go-to rewatch, the writer says, despite its grim premise. When it was first released more than 18 years ago, Zodiac was considered a bit of an also-ran: two and a half hours long, depicting the search as a series of bad leads and dead ends, and said to have flopped at the box office and not been nominated for even a single Oscar.

The film follows Inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr) and cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) as they attempt over years to untangle clues, and the writer finds the movie’s dialogue and performances surprisingly light pleasures amid disturbing scenes.

James Vanderbilt’s screenplay is described as providing a near-constant uptake of new information, enlisting the viewer in the act of investigation and making the film a process piece where clues keep coming but never quite add up. For Fincher and his characters the search transmutes into a vocation that draws obsessives and can consume lives: Graysmith’s quest begins as an attempt to safeguard his children and ends up endangering them, yet he never seriously considers giving it up.

The film concludes without definitively proving the killer’s identity and, the writer says, the exploration will likely never reach its destination; each rewatch can feel like continuing the search.

Key Topics

Culture, Zodiac Film, Bay Area, David Fincher, Robert Graysmith, James Vanderbilt