zodiac movie review rotten tomatoes

A cartoonist (Jake Gyllenhaal, left) teams up with an ace reporter (Robert Downey Jr.) to track down an elusive serial killer in “Zodiac.” Director David Fincher, an elegant stylist, finds the right pace and style for a story about persistence in the face of evil.

‘Zodiac” is the “All the President’s Men” of serial killer movies, with Woodward and Bernstein played by a cop and a cartoonist. It’s not merely “based” on California’s infamous Zodiac killings, but seems to exude the very stench and provocation of the case. The killer, who was never caught, generously supplied so many clues that Sherlock Holmes might have cracked the case in his sitting room. But only a newspaper cartoonist was stubborn enough, and tunneled away long enough, to piece together a convincing case against a man who was perhaps guilty.

The film is a police procedural crossed with a newspaper movie, but free of most of the cliches of either. Its most impressive accomplishment is to gather a bewildering labyrinth of facts and suspicions over a period of years, and make the journey through this maze frightening and suspenseful. I could imagine becoming hopelessly mired in the details of the Zodiac investigation, but director David Fincher (“ Seven “) and his writer, James Vanderbilt , find their way with clarity through the murk. In a film with so many characters, the casting by Laray Mayfield is also crucial; like the only eyewitness in the case, we remember a face once we’ve seen it.

The film opens with a sudden, brutal, bloody killing, followed by others not too long after — five killings the police feel sure Zodiac committed, although others have been attributed to him. But this film will not be a bloodbath. The killer does his work in the earlier scenes of the film, and then, when he starts sending encrypted letters to newspapers, the police and reporters try to do theirs.

The two lead inspectors on the case are David Toschi ( Mark Ruffalo ) and William Armstrong ( Anthony Edwards ). Toschi, famous at the time, tutored Steve McQueen for “ Bullitt ” and was the role model for Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry. Ruffalo plays him not as a hotshot but as a dogged officer who does things by the book because he believes in the book. Edwards’ character, his partner, is more personally worn down by the sheer vicious nature of the killer and his taunts.

At the San Francisco Chronicle , although we meet several staffers, the key players are ace reporter Paul Avery ( Robert Downey Jr., bearded, chain-smoking, alcoholic) and editorial cartoonist Robert Graysmith ( Jake Gyllenhaal ). These characters are real, and indeed the film is based on Graysmith’s books about the case.

I found the newspaper office intriguing in its accuracy. For one thing, it is usually fairly empty, and it was true on a morning paper in those days that the office began to heat up closer to deadline Among the few early arrivals would have been the cartoonist, who was expected to work up a few ideas for presentation at the daily news meeting, and the office alcoholics, perhaps up all night, or already starting their recovery drinking. Yes, reporters drank at their desks 40 years ago, and smoked and smoked and smoked.

Graysmith is new on the staff when the first cipher arrives. He’s like the curious new kid in school fascinated by the secrets of the big boys. He doodles with a copy of the cipher, and we think he’ll solve it, but he doesn’t. He strays off his beat by eavesdropping on cops and reporters, making friends with the boozy Avery, and even talking his way into police evidence rooms. Long after the investigation has cooled, his obsession remains, eventually driving his wife ( Chloe Sevigny ) to move herself and their children in with her mom. Graysmith seems oblivious to the danger he may be drawing into his home, even after he appears on TV and starts hearing heavy breathing over the phone.

What makes “Zodiac” authentic is the way it avoids chases, shootouts, grandstanding and false climaxes, and just follows the methodical progress of police work. Just as Woodward and Bernstein knocked on many doors and made many phone calls and met many very odd people, so do the cops and Graysmith walk down strange pathways in their investigation. Because Graysmith is unarmed and civilian, we become genuinely worried about his naivete and risk-taking, especially during a trip to a basement that is, in its way, one of the best scenes I’ve ever seen along those lines.

Fincher gives us times, days and dates at the bottom of the screen, which serve only to underline how the case seems to stretch out to infinity. There is even time-lapse photography showing the Transamerica building going up. Everything leads up to a heart-stopping moment when two men look, simply look, at one another. It is a more satisfying conclusion than Dirty Harry shooting Zodiac dead, say, in a football stadium.

Fincher is not the first director you would associate with this material. In 1992, at 30, he directed “Alien 3,” which was the least of the Alien movies, but even then had his eye (“Alien 3” is one of the best-looking bad movies I have ever seen). His credits include “Se7en” (1995), a superb film about another serial killer with a pattern to his crimes; “ The Game ” (1997), with Michael Douglas caught in an ego-smashing web; “ Fight Club ” (1999), beloved by most, not by me; the ingenious terror of Jodie Foster in “ Panic Room ” (2002), and now, five years between features, his most thoughtful, involving film.

He seems to be in reaction against the slice-and-dice style of modern crime movies; his composition and editing are more classical, and he doesn’t use nine shots when one will do. (If this same material had been put through an Avid to chop the footage into five times as many shots, we would have been sending our own ciphers to the studio.) Fincher is an elegant stylist on top of everything else, and here he finds the right pace and style for a story about persistence in the face of evil. I am often fascinated by true crime books, partly because of the way they amass ominous details (the best I’ve read is Blood and Money , by Tommy Thompson ), and Fincher understands that true crime is not the same genre as crime action. That he makes every character a distinct individual is proof of that; consider the attention given to Graysmith’s choice of mixed drink.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Mark Ruffalo as David Toschi
• Robert Downey Jr. as Paul Avery
• John Carroll Lynch as Arthur Leigh Allen
• Brian Cox as Melvin Belli
• Philip Baker Hall as Sherwood Morrill
• Chloe Sevigny as Melanie
• Anthony Edwards as Armstrong
• Charles Fleischer as Bob Vaughn
• Zach Grenier as Mel Nicolai
• Dermot Mulroney as Capt. Marty Lee
• Jake Gyllenhaal as Robert Graysmith
• Elias Koteas as Sgt. Jack Mulanax

Directed by

• David Fincher
• James Vanderbilt

Based on the book by

• Robert Graysmith

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'Zodiac' Revisited: The Films of David Fincher

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Ana de Armas, Rosamund Pike, and Joel Kinnaman Teamed Up for This Sharp Crime Thriller

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[This is a re-post of an article from my retrospective series on the work of director David Fincher .  These articles contain spoilers. ]

Listening to the commentary tracks for Se7en , The Game , Fight Club , and Panic Room , you can hear in Fincher's voice a slight bit of annoyance and frustration.  It's not quite bitterness, but there's an acerbic quality from a man who's exhausted and can't help but lay out wry observations.  The Panic Room track in particular conveys the sense that no one should ever make a movie because it's a hellish experience meant only for masochists.  But his commentaries pick up afterwards, and I believe that's partly because Fincher found his true love: digital.

Digital completely changed the way Fincher made movies, and it allowed him to provide the precision to performances that he'd applied to all other aspects of his pictures.  From here on, he sounds much happier, and when talking about Zodiac , it's like a trip down memory lane as he recalls childhood memories of a serial killer who terrorized and tormented a city, and would never be caught.  Zodiac is by no means a happy movie, but it's one that feels like part of a revitalized director who found a picture that fits perfectly with his admiration for process, attention to detail, and the cynicism of how a search for "truth" can rip lives apart.

Zodiac is not a serial killer film.  Unlike Se7en the Zodiac murders aren't lurid or unnervingly artful.  They are absolutely, painfully brutal.  He is a force that disrupts both the idyllic and the mundane even though the lead up to the murders are always foreboding.  When Darlene Ferrin ( Ciara Hughes ) picks up young Mike Mageau ( Lee Norris ), it's with a long tracking shot that feels predatory.  It's from her perspective, but the initial implication is that it's the killer prowling for victims.  When the Zodiac guns down Darlene and Mike, the slow-motion photography is absolutely chilling when played with Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" (a song Fincher chose because he personally associated it with the time period).  This killing is not made to look "cool", and it's given an extra chill when the scene ends with the way the Zodiac says "Good-bye," to the 911 dispatcher.

The second murder at Lake Berryessa is also a disruption.  Despite the beautiful setting, the colors are washed out but also clean.  It's like looking at an old photo, and not in the way of the 70s-style Paramount logo that opens the movie.  The scene is off-center just enough so that when the Zodiac comes in, it's certainly an odd juxtaposition, but not so far off as to be comical, which is saying something when you consider it's a stocky man dressed in black wearing an executioner's hood in broad daylight.  And once again, the murder is absolutely brutal with Cecelia Shepard ( Pell James ) screaming as she's stabbed to death.

The final murder, the killing of San Francisco taxicab driver Paul Stine, is perhaps the most "showy" as Fincher takes us on a long, overhead view of the cab making its way to Washington and Cherry before Stine is shot in the neck in the same slow-motion fashion as Darlene and Mike.  Like the Zodiac, Fincher chose to change his pattern.

And those are the only murders in the movie.

As Fincher points out in his commentary track, Zodiac is "a newspaper story that becomes an obsession with justice."

I love that the story of Zodiac , the story about a killer who is never brought to justice (and justice itself may be impossible) is arguably Fincher's most personal movie to date.  Aside from all of the personal connections, both in terms of where he grew up and his father working in the news business, there's an awareness of trying to branch out and redefine himself as a filmmaker by scaling back down to the bare essentials.  "I saw this movie as flying in the face of everything I had done before," says Fincher, "and I saw it as very, very simple in terms of its travel and cause-and-effect."

If you break down Zodiac , it's deeply methodical.  We have dates to guide us.  The events are largely done without embellishment other than the murders, which are gruesome and spur the imagination to the point where Fincher—who was a stickler for detail on this movie when it came to recreating the time period right down to making sure the San Francisco Chronicle set had pencils in the desks—is willing to bend the truth a bit.

For example, Fincher admits that Darlene and Mike probably knew their attacker, and Zodiac aficionados debate whether or not the killer used a silencer.  Fincher's interpretation provides the dramatic flourishes the Zodiac would probably admire, and it's also worth noting that every murder ends with a fade-out as if every killing is a little vignette where we have to step into the Zodiac's world, a world which is embellished, theatrical, and operatic, much like the killer.

Once again (and I'm going to point this out every time), I think Fincher has a disturbing respect for people who are brilliant even if they're also terrible.  I do think Fincher's comment about John Doe in Se7en —"more enthusiasm than technique"—applies more to Zodiac, but there's an appreciation of an artist.  The letters are artistic expression, and as Fincher says in the commentary, he's fascinated by the "ongoing conversation with someone who is ‘in-process’", and the letters are the hub of that development.  One of the things I like about Fincher is that he's kind of fucked up in his interests, but he's not a personality who is constantly reminding you of how "fucked up" he is.  He plays it calm, cool, and collected, which is part of what makes his movies so powerful.  The most dangerous guy isn't the raving maniac; it's the master planner sitting quietly in the corner of the room.

When we return to hard procedural, everything is cold and detached.  It's slightly ironic that Fincher's first digital movie would be for a film set in the 1970s, but it works perfectly in so many ways.  It's extremely subtle right down the magnificent visual effects work.  Unlike The Curious Case of Benjamin Button , the effects in Zodiac are literally background at certain points.  When Toschi ( Mark Ruffalo ) and Armstrong ( Anthony Edwards ) go to investigate the murder at Washington and Cherry, the entire background is green screen, and it's seamless.  That may not seem like a huge deal now, but it's damn impressive that the effect perfectly holds up seven years later.

The visual effects and cinematography help provide a ghostly air to the whole proceedings.  The methodology of the investigation still has a quick pace and even a dark sense of humor, especially when Paul Avery ( Robert Downey Jr. ) is on screen, and even though it's just Downey doing Downey (aka Tony Stark), it's still amusing (he also has my favorite line in the movie: "Me thinks our friend is a tad bit fuckered in the head.").  Zodiac is by no means soulless or mechanical, but it is merciless in the sense of an indifferent universe.

Fincher is still soaking his movie in gorgeous contrasts and deep blacks, but there's a pervading sense of normalcy that makes the movie both melancholy and exciting.  We know Toschi, Armstrong, and Robert Graysmith ( Jake Gyllenhaal ) are all smart people, and they can drive the investigation forward.  The tragedy is that it doesn't matter .  The investigation is paradoxically what eats away at these men.  "The Rick Marshalls of this world will suck you dry," Toschi tells Graysmith.

Fincher isn't advocating that people give up trying to catch killers or that procedural movies are dumb.  The form of this movie is a true procedural as opposed to Se7en which is lurid thriller, albeit one that's incredibly well-made.  Zodiac is a procedural down to the point where Fincher is willing to remove central characters for long stretches of time.  We briefly get to know Graysmith and Avery, and then once Toschi and Armstrong enter the picture, they own it for a large chunk of the movie.

Fincher could have ended Zodiac at the screening of Dirty Harry .  It would be a nice little button on a story about guys who tried to get Zodiac , they didn't succeed, and movies provide the comfort of justice reality refuses to provide.  That's an abbreviated version of the film, but it's telling and not showing.  We know that sometimes cops don't catch the bad guys.  It's unusual that they missed one as prominent as the Zodiac, but that's sometime how it goes.  What remains unanswered is the cost of justice, and how an unsolved puzzle can undo someone as pure and good-hearted as Graysmith.

When Graysmith renters the picture, Zodiac is now an idea.  We've met Arthur Lee Allen ( John Carroll Lynch ) and lost him.  The practical case has fallen apart, and Graysmith—a lover of puzzles and a freaking boy scout—can't accept that.  There has to be some semblance of justice in the world.  It can't be at the mercy of someone who sends letters that were, as Fincher puts it in the commentary track, "Designed to be a real ‘fuck you’ to the people who were hunting him."

Fincher notes that the movie took more than its fair share of dramatic license with the story, which is fine because Zodiac is not a docudrama, and it's not about "catching" Zodiac, which is why the movie is enduring and captivating.  It's about the impossibility of justice and how the search for truth may not be worth the answers.  "I need to know who he is," Graysmith tells his wife ( Chloë Sevigny ) as she's leaving him.

Except catching Zodiac doesn't make the world a better place, and that's why the movie is so indifferent to his passion.  It's still beautifully shot, and it matches Graysmith's dread, but it never indulges his passion.  David Fincher isn't on Graysmith's side, nor does he particularly pity his protagonist.  Granted, Graysmith doesn't even take a breath to feel pain over losing his family before he hops right back into the investigation.  There's the sense that if he can just get one answer, then the world will be right.  Fincher doesn't even particularly care if Allen was the killer.  It's just a narrative through line.

Graysmith does eventually get to look Allen in the eye—a look that took 14 years after the first murder—and that's all the "justice" you can get.  Justice isn't about righting a wrong, or punishing the wicked.  At most, justice provides solace, and for Graysmith, it was at particularly high cost.  Yes, he got a book out of it (one that's horribly written; I powered through Zodiac Unmasked and it doesn't know if it wants to follow the case chronologically or jump right to pointing the finger at Allen), but that's a minor victory compared to everything that came before.

With such a heavy reliance on character-driven procedural aspects, there's not much else to focus on.  Aside from the killings, there's hardly any embellishment, which is why there's so much emphasis on the performances.  Zodiac has a propulsive plotline, but that plotline eats away at its characters.  Fincher already did plenty of takes on his other movies, but digital allowed him to be as exacting with his actors as he was on any other part of the production.  Some actors enjoy this process and embrace it as a rehearsal period.  Others: not so much (you can see Gyllenhaal borderline whining on the set in the making-of documentary, and Downey infamously left mason jars of urine lying around in protest).  The key difference is that digital brings everything in line.  There's a crispness to the performances that's slightly sharper than in previous movies.  This may seem like a minor detail, but keep in mind that at one point during the production of Zodiac , Fincher told his costume designer to remove one line of thread in the eye-slit of the Zodiac's executioner's hood.  The technology was now as precise as the director.

The movie closes with the adult Mike Mageau ( Jimmi Simpson ) identifying Allen as his attacker while "Hurdy Gurdy Man" plays once again.  That night on July 4, 1969 never really ended.

Death would follow Fincher to his next picture, but it would be soaked in a lush romance that struggled with life, love, time, and cross-purposes.

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Movie Review | 'Zodiac'

Hunting a Killer as the Age of Aquarius Dies

By Manohla Dargis

• March 2, 2007

David Fincher’s magnificently obsessive new film, “Zodiac,” tracks the story of the serial killer who left dead bodies up and down California in the 1960s and possibly the ’70s, and that of the men who tried to stop him. Set when the Age of Aquarius disappeared into the black hole of the Manson family murders, the film is at once sprawling and tightly constructed, opaque and meticulously detailed. It’s part police procedural, part monster movie, a funereal entertainment that is an unexpected repudiation of Mr. Fincher’s most famous movie, the serial-killer fiction “Seven,” as well as a testament to this cinematic savant’s gifts.

Informed by history and steeped in pulp fiction, “Zodiac” stars a trio of beauties — Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo — all at the top of their performance game and captured in out-of-sight high-definition digital by the cinematographer Harris Savides. Mr. Gyllenhaal is the sneaky star of the show as the real-life cartoonist turned writer Robert Graysmith, though he doesn’t emerge from the wings until fairly late, after the bodies and the investigations have cooled. A silky, seductive Mr. Downey plays Paul Avery, a showboating newspaper reporter who chased the killer in print, while Mr. Ruffalo struts his estimable stuff as Dave Toschi, the San Francisco police detective who taught Steve McQueen how to wear a gun in “Bullitt” and pursued Zodiac close to the ground.

The relative unknown James Vanderbilt wrote the jigsaw-puzzle screenplay, working from Mr. Graysmith’s exhaustive, exhausting true-crime accounts of the murders and their investigations, “Zodiac” and “Zodiac Unmasked.” Mr. Graysmith, coyly played by Mr. Gyllenhaal as something of an overgrown Hardy Boy, his great big eyes matched by his great big ambition, was a political cartoonist doodling Nixon noses at The San Francisco Chronicle when Zodiac started sending letters and ciphers to the paper, divulging intimate knowledge of the crimes. The first messages arrived in 1969, the year Zodiac shot one young couple and knifed another in separate Northern California counties before moving on to San Francisco, where he put a bullet in the head of a cabbie.

The first cipher stumped an alphabet soup of law enforcement agencies, including the C.I.A. and F.B.I., but was cracked by a California schoolteacher and his wife. The decoded cipher opened with an ominous and crudely effective flourish: “I like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forrest because man is the most dangeroue anamal.” The letters, the misspellings and the lax punctuation kept coming, and perhaps so did the murders, though only five were substantively linked to him. A publicity hound, Zodiac claimed responsibility for murders he might not have committed, a habit that added to a boogeyman mystery and myth that chroniclers of his crimes, including Mr. Graysmith, have exploited.

Mr. Fincher made his name with “Seven,” a thriller in which the grotesquely mutilated bodies of murder victims are nothing more than lovingly designed props. Although more than capable of adding to the exploitation annals, he is up to something profoundly different in this film, which opens with the shooting of two people parked on a lovers’ lane at night, an attack that is soon followed by a squirmingly visceral knife assault on a couple during a daytime idyll. By front-loading the violence, Mr. Fincher instantly makes it clear just what kind of murderer this was — one who liked to get his hands wet — and ensures that the murders don’t become the story’s payoff, our reward for all the time stamps, geographic shifts, narrative complication and frustrated action.

The story structure is as intricate as the storytelling is seamless, with multiple time-and-place interludes neatly slotted into two distinct sections. The first largely concerns the murders and the investigations; the second, far shorter one involves Graysmith’s transformation of the murders and the investigations into a narrative. With its nicotine browns, the first section, which opens in 1969 and continues through the mid-’70s, looks as if it had been art-directed by a roomful of chain smokers. Dark and moody, like all of Mr. Fincher’s work, this part has been drained of almost all bright colors, save for splashes of yellow, the color of safety and caution, and an alarming-looking blue elixir called an Aqua Velva that is Graysmith’s bar drink of choice.

The second, more vibrantly hued section begins with Graysmith sitting in the Chronicle newsroom, its yellow pillars now painted blue. He looks as bright and bushy-tailed as the day he read Zodiac’s first letter, though now he comes equipped with three kids and a wife (an unfortunately familiar scold whom Chloë Sevigny imbues with some welcome wit). But there are demons still loose, inside and out, which is why Graysmith takes on Zodiac alone, warming up the stone-cold case. Domestic tranquillity, it seems, can’t hold a candle to work, to the fanatical pursuit of meaning and self-discovery, to finding out what makes you and the world tick — which is why, while “Zodiac” contains multitudes (genres, jokes, nods at 1970s New Hollywood), it feels like Mr. Fincher’s most personal film to date.

Maybe that’s why it doesn’t have the usual movie-made shrink- rapping and beard-stroking, as in Mommy was a castrating shrew and Daddy used a two-by-four as a paddle. Throughout the film Mr. Fincher and company keep focus on Zodiac’s crimes, on the nuts and bolts of his deeds, rather than on the nurture and nature behind them. There is no normalizing psychology here, and no deep-dish symbolism either, maybe because the title crazy is so peculiarly fond of symbols, which he sprinkles in his missives and, for one murder, wears superhero style on a black-hooded costume that makes him look like a portly ninja in a Z-movie quickie. It’s no wonder the victims don’t see the threat behind the masquerade until it’s too late.

Psychology isn’t Mr. Fincher’s bag; he isn’t interested in what lies and writhes beneath, but what is right there: the visible evidence. And what beautiful evidence it is. His polished technique can leave you slack-jawed, as can his scrupulous attention to detail: the peeling walls of a derelict building in “Fight Club,” the rows of ant-size letters marching across the pages of a composition notebook in “Seven,” the bruises splashed across a woman’s arm in “Zodiac.” There is mystery in this minutiae, not just virtuosity, and maybe, to judge from reports of his painstaking process, a touch of madness. Like his detectives and journalists, Mr. Fincher seems possessed by the need to recreate reality — to revisit the scene of the crime — piece by piece.

There’s a moment early in the film when Mr. Downey stands in the Chronicle newsroom, back arched and rear gently hoisted, affecting a posture that calls to mind Gene Kelly done up as a Toulouse-Lautrec jockey in “An American in Paris.” Avery has already started his long slip-slide into boozy oblivion, abetted by toots of coke, but as he strides around the newsroom, motored by talent and self-regard, he is the guy everybody else wants to be or wants to have. Like Mr. Ruffalo’s detective, who leaves everything bobbing in his rapid wake, Mr. Downey fills the screen with life that, by its very nature, is a rebuke to the death drive embodied by the Zodiac killer. Rarely has a film with so much blood on its hands seemed so insistently alive.

“Zodiac” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It contains extremely graphic gun and knife violence, as well as alcohol abuse and cocaine use.

Opens today nationwide.

Directed by David Fincher; written by James Vanderbilt, based on the books “Zodiac” and “Zodiac Unmasked” by Robert Graysmith; director of photography, Harris Savides; edited by Angus Wall; music by David Shire; production designer, Donald Graham Burt; produced by Mr. Vanderbilt, Mike Medavoy, Arnold W. Messer, Bradley J. Fischer and Cean Chaffin; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 158 minutes.

WITH: Jake Gyllenhaal (Robert Graysmith), Mark Ruffalo (Inspector Dave Toschi), Robert Downey Jr. (Paul Avery), Anthony Edwards (Inspector Bill Armstrong), Brian Cox (Melvin Belli), Elias Koteas (Sgt. Jack Mulanax) and Chloë Sevigny (Melanie).

Zodiac (2007)

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David fincher responds to ‘zodiac’ critics: “that’s the book that we bought”.

The filmmaker addresses those who were disappointed he didn't go down other "rabbit hole[s]" in his 2007 film about the Zodiac killer.

By Hilary Lewis

Hilary Lewis

Deputy Editor, East Coast, THR.com

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David Fincher ‘s 2007 film Zodiac has been acclaimed by critics, with it boasting a 90 percent freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a top five ranking on The Hollywood Reporter ‘s list of the best 50 movies of the 21st century so far. But there were still some people who were disappointed by the movie’s lack of resolution.

With the many theories about the identity of the Zodiac killer, some viewers might have wanted a more definitive ending or take on the still unsolved mystery that gripped people for decades.

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“That’s the book that we bought,” he said, cutting off his own line of questioning. “We didn’t buy everyone’s book about the Zodiac.”

Indeed Fincher’s film is based on books by Robert Graysmith, the newspaper cartoonist played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who becomes increasingly obsessed with the identity of the Zodiac killer. The movie, written by James Vanderbilt, also stars Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Chloë Sevigny, John Carroll Lynch and Anthony Edwards.

Fincher made his comments in response to a fan question about making projects involving real people, including ones who are still alive, like the subjects of his Facebook origins film, The Social Network , and the inspirations behind his Mindhunter series.

“You have a responsibility to make sure that you are saying what you want to say because chances are they can deck you in an airport,” Fincher said, speaking generally. “So you want to be conscious and be smart about it. Making movies about things that are ripped from headlines is a slippery slope. I think it’s important to be responsible, and by the same token, you also have to entertain an audience.”

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Zodiac (2007) Movie

by Michael Cole | Dec 23, 2015 | Articles , Movies | 6 comments

Zodiac (2007) is the David Fincher docudrama that depicts events surrounding the case of the Zodiac Killer. Although other, smaller-scale, movies have covered the subject of the San Francisco Bay Area serial killer — e.g. The Zodiac Killer (1971), The Zodiac (2005) — and the story has inspired another Hollywood blockbuster — Dirty Harry (1972) — this film was the first and last high-budget Hollywood production specifically about the Zodiac.

Quick Summary

First-class Hollywood production coupled with an inherently interesting storyline (through the first half of the movie) combine to counterbalance a film that’s too long and looses itself while attempting to convince the audience that Arthur Leigh Allen was the movie’s namesake serial murderer.

With the screenplay primarily based on Robert Graysmith’s bestselling (but flawed) book, Zodiac (1986), the movie Zodiac (2007) tells the story of the America’s most notorious never-apprehended serial killer through the interactions of three key characters: San Francisco Chronicle political cartoonist Robert Graysmith, Chronicle reporter Paul Avery, and San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) Homicide Inspector David Toschi.

The first and most interesting part of the movie leads into the shortest of the three segments where the screenwriter, James Vanderbilt, develops Arthur Leigh Allen as a character and suspect. We, the audience, witness Allen come to the attention of SFPD through the accusations of one of his friends, Don Cheney. Their subsequent interview with the slightly-off, Zodiac-watch wearing person-of-interest includes Allen making the seemingly taunting non-denial denial: “I’m not the Zodiac. And if I was, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.” Eventually, a lack of direct evidence forces Toschi and his partner Armstrong down a path of inaction.

The final segment of the movie focuses on Graysmith’s “investigation” (for lack of a better word), his eventual revelation that Allen is the Zodiac (by the way, have I mentioned that Allen almost certainly was not the Zodiac), and the publication of his book. In the end, the audience is told that Allen must be the Zodiac because the killer supposedly said something to Melvin Belli’s housekeeper that implied his birthday was December 18th, which happens to be Allen’s birthday.

The epilogue explains that Arthur Leigh Allen, despite being dead, remains the prime and only suspect in several jurisdictions where the investigation remains open (as of 2007).

Reception and Performance

Based on the strength of Fincher’s directing, Vanderbilt’s writing, and the impressive ensemble of acting talent, critics and audiences alike agreed that Zodiac (2007) was a particularly good movie. It has a 7.7 rating at the IMDB and an 89% Certified Fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes . On the review front, both the late Roger Ebert and the New York Times gave the film an impressively complimentary review at the time of its release. Some critics decried the film’s length or its unsatisfying resolution (unfortunately, reality was uncooperative on this latter point). But, most saw the movie for what it was: a work of art created by some of Hollywood’s best talents.

From a financial perspective, the movie did reasonably well, pulling in a worldwide box-office gross of $83 million. However, when considered against the backdrop of its substantial budget, $85 million, and the relative success of other Fincher works, the movie is a disappointment. The following image (from this website ) shows how well several of Fincher’s films performed in terms of domestic box office. As is evident from the chart, Zodiac (2007) stayed in theaters the shortest period of time and earned the least of the six films (albeit it was just below Fight Club ).

There is much to like about Zodiac (2007). Fincher’s directing is top notch. Vanderbilt’s writing is compelling, especially through the first half of the film. The movie boasts not one, not two, but three mega stars in the form of Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey, Jr. Unsurprisingly, the acting is exceptionally well done.

From my admittedly biased perspective, however, the single most significant accomplishment of Zodiac (2007) has less to do with the technicalities of movie making and more to do with the case itself. Prior to the release of Zodiac (2007), the Zodiac Killer was not universally well known. People familiar with true crime knew of it. Of course, the millions who had read Graysmith’s books — he also wrote Zodiac Unmasked (2002) — were aware of it. Residents of the West Coast generally knew something about the story. Yet, there were large segments of the population who had never even heard of the case.

All of that changed with the release of Zodiac (2007). Now, nearly all the people I talk to have either seen the movie or, at least, are aware of the case by virtue of knowing about the movie. This increased level of exposure has generated a large amount of additional interest in the mystery. Ultimately, this exposure is a good thing in terms of increasing the likelihood that the case will eventually be solved. Perhaps it’s not too much to hope that this additional interest has sown the seeds that will one day bear the fruits of resolution.

The final highlight I’ll note may seem minor, but I’ve always felt that the tagline for the movie is exceptionally good:

There’s more than one way to lose your life to a killer .

For many people, the case of the Zodiac Killer has been a destructive force. It consumes much in the way of opportunity costs and yields next to nothing in terms of definitive answers. People have unwittingly destroyed their lives trying to solve the mystery of the killer’s identity. People have done irreparable harm to the relationships in their lives trying to solve the killer’s ciphers. As a somewhat humorous manifestation of this dynamic, Robert Graysmith, upon reading the screenplay for Zodiac (2007), reportedly said : “God, now I see why my wife divorced me.” As someone who has questioned his interest in this case on more than one occasion, I appreciate the tag line.

Undeniably, there are a few problems with Zodiac (2007) . The first such problem is its emphasis on Arthur Leigh Allen. Allen was a good suspect in 1986, at the time when Graysmith’s book was published. But, in 2007, he was considerably less of a good suspect. As is partially dealt with in the movie, Allen has been disqualified on the basis of handwriting, fingerprints, palm prints, and a nuclear DNA comparison against a partial profile developed from one of the killer’s authenticated letters. Some people refuse to accept this evidence for one reason or another, but it’s highly unlikely that Allen was the Zodiac.

SFPD Inspectors Dave Toschi and Bill Armstrong interview Arthur Leigh Allen.

At two hours and forty-two minutes, the next issue with Zodiac (2007) is simply its length. The story has some inherent difficulties that must be overcome during its telling, e.g. there is a lot of information, it lacks a satisfying conclusion, etc. Allowing certain parts of the story to needlessly drag on amounts to taking a bad situation and making it worse.

Toward the end of the movie, Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), tries to dissuade Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) from continuing his involvement by saying:

Too much time has gone by. Too much evidence gets lost. People get old. They forget.

When this was being said, I remember having two simultaneous thoughts. First, the timing doesn’t make sense since, at this point in the story, it’s only been a small number of years since the last authenticated communication from the killer. Second, the words felt authentic, with respect to the movie itself, because so much time had passed since its most compelling part. This latter thought was evidence that the movie was overshooting its optimal duration.

Of course, these two problems could have fixed each other. If Vanderbilt had removed the emphasis on Allen and gotten rid of Graysmith’s “investigation,” the result would have been a tighter film that, in my view, would have been more enjoyable. Admittedly, doing so would have made the movie have considerably less to do with Graysmith’s book, probably to the point that many would have questioned whether it made sense to tell the story from Graysmith’s perspective. Also, I’m sure there was a desire to have something in the way of a conclusion, since Hollywood likes to wrap things up into nice, well-defined packages. But, whatever resolution the movie currently provides is an illusion anyway; so, I don’t perceive it as adding a lot of value.

With respect to the case itself, I find the omission of the Lake Herman Road murders — the Zodiac’s first attack that claimed the lives of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen — uncomfortable. There are five people whom the killer definitely murdered. Leaving out two of them feels wrong. The bonus material from the Director’s Cut of Zodiac  explains that Vanderbilt made the decision to omit the attack after careful consideration, choosing to do so because there were no witnesses to the events and therefore he could not be sure that he was faithfully reproducing it. I find this argument weak and unconvincing. From a victim perspective, I feel their part of the story deserved to be told.

Speaking of faithful reproduction, Fincher’s determination to accurately represent several aspects of the Zodiac story has been widely recognized. People often point out how he arranged to have trees helicoptered in to the Lake Berryessa crime scene in order to make area look as it did in 1969. Elsewhere, he’s explained how he cast different actors to play the role of the mysterious killer in different scenes so that the each actor matched the inconsistent physical descriptions given by the relevant eyewitnesses. In these and similar ways, it’s clear the director went to great lengths in order to ensure the accuracy of the storytelling.

Robert Downey, Jr. on the set of Zodiac (2007).

Of course, the overall question of accuracy is not so simplistic. Zodiac (2007) is, first and foremost, a creative endeavor whose intention is to entertain. Achieving accuracy at the expense of fundamental movie-making requirements could, in the extreme, sacrifice the viability of the film. Hence, what we see again and again in the movie is a compromise in accuracy made in the interest of dramatization that moves the story along. One of the larger examples of this phenomenon is the substantive relationship between Robert Graysmith and Paul Avery. In reality, no such relationship existed. In the movie, it’s an important device used to develop the action.

Perhaps the most questionable inaccuracy in the movie is the scene in which Paul Avery receives a greeting card from the killer with a bloody swatch of victim Paul Stine’s shirt. In truth, the card contained no such swatch. Interestingly, Fincher addresses this application of artistic license in the commentary to the Director’s Cut of Zodiac , where he says:

The card was a necessary function of having to get Avery to a place … where Avery got a gun. In reality the bloody shirt arrived in another letter that was sent to the Chronicle. But, we needed to kickstart this idea that, we needed to make it positive for the audience and absolutely unequivocal that he had been communicated with by the Zodiac. And so again, a little bit of dramatic license. 

Another liberty that was clearly taken to simplify the telling of the story was having the killer’s second letter arrive at the Chronicle . In reality, the Zodiac sent that letter to the city’s other primary newspaper, the  Examiner . Since the latter newspaper was not represented in the film, it was a forgivable tweak to allow the brief mention of the letter to happen at the Chronicle .

To be sure, people who are familiar with the case of the Zodiac can, relatively easily, find points to nitpick. For example, during the attack at Blue Rock Springs, Michael Mageau was able to exit Darlene Ferrin’s car and fall onto the ground in time to see the killer drive away; he was even able to determine that the car had a California license plate [1] . These facts are inconsistent with the scene from the movie. Yet, in a higher-level sense, this type of minor problem matters little and detracts even less from the value that the movie provides, in terms of both entertaining and informing.

In the final analysis, I think it’s safe to say that the vast majority of Zodiac (2007) is accurate enough in the ways that matter the most.

One of the problems with historical dramatizations is that we — who live in the future — have a tendency to allow our knowledge of what eventually happened to creep into our stories in ways that are not representative of the events that we’re portraying. Often this is done consciously, sometimes as part of a subtle communication to the audience; at other times it happens subconsciously.

While there are multiple instances of this phenomenon present in Zodiac (2007) — mostly of the conscious variety — one in particular rubs me the wrong way: the presence of what I refer to as the Taking Credit theory. The essence of this theory is that the Zodiac Killer took credit, through his writing, for several crimes which he did not commit.

In the movie, this idea is advanced, almost as a point of undisputed fact, when a drunken Paul Avery explains to Robert Graysmith that everything the killer needed to write about his alleged encounter with Kathleen Johns (the woman whom many people — myself included — believe he kidnapped for several hours), was published in a somewhat obscure  Modesto Bee article [2] on the day following the ordeal 1 . This is a common argument that is made by many who advocate for the Taking Credit theory; however, it was not a common argument at the time Avery is making it in the movie.

Taking Credit usually embodies other contentions as well, including that the killer deceitfully took credit for: the murder of Cheri Jo Bates, the killing of San Francisco Police Officer Richard Radetich, and the disappearance and presumptive murder of Lake Tahoe nurse Donna Lass.

In my view, the Taking Credit theory generally receives much more attention that it deserves. Nevertheless, it is a real position held by numerous people familiar with the case. The larger problem I have with the inclusion of the Taking Credit theory in Zodiac (2007) is the idea of Paul Avery being its champion.

People who doubt Kathleen Johns’s involvement with the Zodiac often cite discrepancies in her account of events as recorded in the known police reports versus her later, more dramatic, descriptions — most notably in Graysmith’s 1986 book. But, long before the publication of Zodiac (1986), the world in general and the Bay Area in particular learned of the more dramatic version of Johns’s encounter thanks to the tenacity of Paul Avery. He tracked down Kathleen Johns and reported her story at the same time he was breaking the news of the probable Cheri Jo Bates connection [4] .

Given the work that Paul Avery did to establish the linkage of two out of the four possible crimes which are cast into doubt by the  Taking Credit theory, it just feels wrong for Vanderbilt to have made Avery the advocate for the line of speculation.

Zodiac (2007) is not a movie without flaws; it’s not perfect. Its emphasis on Robert Graysmith and its insistence that Arthur Leigh Allen was the never-identified serial killer leave something to be desired. But, as someone who has long been fascinated by this enduring mystery, I truly appreciate a legitimate Hollywood blockbuster specifically devoted to the subject. Add to these circumstances one of the industry’s most talented directors performing at the top of his game, three superstar actors who do an equally impressive job bringing the characters to life, and a good (albeit not great) screenplay, the result is a movie that’s hard not to like, imperfections and all.

Zodiac (2007) Trailer

1. The reliance of this argument on the relatively obscure Modesto Bee article has always seemed odd to me. The San Francisco Examiner  published a similar story with equivalent information [3] . It’s much more likely the killer would have seen this latter article.

[1] “Gunshot Victim Fails To Identify Attacker.” Vallejo Times Herald (July 7, 1969). 1. [2] “Woman Says Zodiac Killer Captured Her.” The Modesto Bee (March 23, 1970). 1. [3] “Rode With Zodiac, Woman Claims.” San Francisco Examiner (March 23, 1970). 4. [4] Paul Avery. “New Evidence in Zodiac Killings.” San Francisco Chronicle (Nov. 16, 1970). 1.

I think overall the movie is excellent and have never worried about its numerous inaccuracies, accepting that this is, after all, the essence of film making for dramatic effect. When the Lake Herman Road murders happened in late 1968, nobody was aware that in a little over six months later the most notorious killer in US history was about to reveal himself to the world and the eventual dawning of reality, that these isolated murders at Lake Herman Road were in fact part of something much bigger, and this I feel is what the film was attempting to capture, by omitting the first two murders. Had the director lumped the first two attacks together at the beginning of the movie, the revelation of earlier murders by the killer is lost to the audience, as they had already attached them under the banner of the movie. Many unsolved murder cases, particularly long standing ones such as this, are often used as vehicles of entertainment, the mystery of which often captives a huge following and the Zodiac case has become the flag bearer, rivaling Jack the Ripper in many respects, the danger of which, is often the victims become the footnote and not the headline. One scene in the movie struck a chord with me, and that is the sheer terror in the face of the young girl at Lake Berryessa, suddenly realizing she has moments to live, something that the word terror doesn’t do justice to. This is the true face of murder and something that should never be forgotten.

Thanks Richard. Yes, we seem to have similar perspectives regarding these type of movies in terms of their purpose and value. I understand what you’re saying about Lake Herman Road and I do believe the approach works well if we consider the choice strictly as a question of storytelling. I also agree that portraying the attack would have been a bit challenging since the Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs attacks were, in many ways, similar. Having said that, the minimal mention of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen still doesn’t sit well with me.

Speaking of Lake Berryessa, I’m sure you’ve seen it, but there’s an interview with Bryan Hartnell in which he talks about seeing the movie for the first time. In particular, he mentions that as Cecelia is getting attacked, it became too much for him and he had to turn away. Interestingly, just as he turned away, the scene cut to the next one. It’s an impactful bit of film making.

The Zodiac has ruined so many lives, not only the lives of the people who he targeted and their families, but also the lives of many investigators who failed to solve the case. There has been no closure for any of them. Some amateur sleuths have also become swept up in the mystery, often to the point of obsession bordering on mania, and somehow I suspect that people with obsessive personalities may be more inclined to persist with a bad or imprecise theory rather than admit defeat. The number of competing theories about the Zodiac killer at any single time is truly astounding. It has become a case of “Will the real Zodiac please stand up?” I am sure that as time goes by, the mythology will only continue to take on a life of its own and spread out along a multitude of lateral tangents. Many of the theories will be fueled along more by personal obsessions and egos than rational science.

Just a few thoughts from someone in Law Enforcement and who believes it couldn’t have been anyone else but Allen

”Allen has been disqualified on the basis of handwriting, fingerprints, palm prints, and a nuclear DNA comparison against a partial profile developed from one of the killer’s authenticated letters”

Pretty fair statement, but I really doubt any of that evidence listed above is actually linked to the killer.

1.Handwriting couldn’t be used to eliminate Allen. They did obtain samples from both hands, but he surely changed the way he wrote when he gave samples from his non-dominant hand.

2.All of these letters were grossly mishandled and i highly doubt any real trace of the killer was there to even be tested.

Bomb diagrams found in Allen’s basement–very unusual and very similar to what the killer had written It’s believed that the killer knew Ferrin, and Allen probably did. Wildy bold habit of wearing a zodiac watch–I may have fell over if i was interviewing him and noticed this. Allen’s connection to the military and likelihood of owning Wing walker boots–same size also apparently. Sister-in-law claiming Allen misspelling words on purpose–again very unusual and very telling. Apparent identification of his photo by Mageau and Hartnell claiming his voice was similar. Mageau only ID’d him many years later, but I wasn’t there so I can’t discredit the guy. If he says he’s sure, then so be it. Don Cheney’s statements about what Allen told him, who knows how truthful the guy was, but Detectives have stated that they not only believed him, but they actually thought Cheney was more involved than he let on. Allen admitting that he planned to go to Lake Berryessa on the day the couple was attacked, then later claiming he changed his mind.–I’m highly confident that he certainly DID go to that lake, with the results being well known

In my opinion no other suspect even came close and there is much more evidence than what I just mentioned. In this day and age Allen would certainly have been charged with these murders, but I highly doubt we’ll ever know for sure. Just a few observations from someone who deals with criminals on a daily basis. Cheers!

I found items taken from the Zodiac killers victims in 06 in 64146 zip Stines wallet , cab keys , bloody shirt, also CJB ‘S bloody school tablet , and can prove it , but get almost no response from media , Riverside cal. was frantic to know exactly where in 13 , had our cops searching ….it will never be solved if not investigated properly. The guys still alive , and his claim of over 100 is not a lie

One of the inaccuracies that stood out to me, was when the gloves were tossed in the back seat of Paul Stine’s cab. They were found under the dashboard on the passenger’s side of the cab, where Zodiac had been sitting! Witnesses saw the killer get into the front seat in downtown SF. David Toschi told me in 1970, that Zodiac laughed in a frenzy while stabbing Cecelia Shepard. Years later I read that in an old newspaper. This is important information to know about this sick killer!

Dave Bar, It will be solved by DNA!

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Screen Rant

Zodiac: 8 things fincher’s movie gets right about the unsolved case (& 7 it gets wrong).

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The story of the Zodiac killer is one that has continued to fascinate the public for over fifty years. While not the first serial killer to terrorize America, the Zodiac was unique for speaking publicly about his murders via letters that were published in San Francisco newspapers.

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Though the case of the Zodiac killer remains unsolved, it has been the subject of interest in Hollywood for years, with the most famous depiction being David Fincher's 2007 Zodiac . The film is often praised as being one of the most historically accurate films based on real events. Of course, it does still take some liberties as well as exclude key details. Here are some things Zodiac gets right about the case and some things it gets wrong.

Updated on February 7th, 2021 by Kristen Palamara:  Although  David Fincher's Zodiac is an older movie released in 2007, it was a very comprehensive representation of the real-life events of the Zodiac killings that lasted decades. The movie takes its specifics from Robert Graysmith, who was involved in the events as he was a cartoonist at the newspaper the Zodiac Killer frequently sent letters to and Graysmith became obsessed with solving the case. Fincher's Zodiac is a well-researched movie that tries to stay as close to the truth as possible, but of course, there are a few differences between real-life and the movie. 

Right: Robert Graysmith And Arthur Leigh Allen Meeting

The movie depicts a meeting between Robert Graysmith and his main suspect he believes is the Zodiac Killer, Arthur Leigh Allen. The movie shows Graysmith going inside the hardware store that Allen works at and the two staring each other down, which is pretty similar to actual events.

Graysmith claims he went to the hardware store that Allen worked at and Allen drove up next to him in the parking lot, blocking the driver car door, and the two stared each other down.

Right: Almost Catching The Zodiac Killer

The movie depicts the Zodiac Killer killing a taxi cab driver and when Dave Toschi arrives at the crime scene he learns that a few officers had seen a civilian leaving the scene when they arrived.

The officers had received an incorrect description of the shooter and didn't think anything of the man walking away, but eye witness accounts of the shooter and the description from the officers were very similar meaning that they had a chance to possibly stop and catch the Zodiac Killer then, and this seems to be pretty similar to the real-life events.

Wrong: Sherwood Morrill

While it's true that Sherwood Morrill (Philip Baker Hall) was the main handwriting expert working on the case, in real life he wasn't really an antagonist to Graysmith and Toschi's investigation.

He was a well-respected expert in the field and most agreed with his findings and although some disagreed it was typically in a respectful manner. The movie depicts Morrill as somewhat of an antagonist to the two even though in real life Morrill backed Toschi when some accused him of manufacturing Zodiac letters.

Right: Zodiac Threatening School Children

In the movie, the Zodiac Killer sends a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle and claims that he'll blow up a school bus and shoot any of the survivors that escape the crash.

This was a real threat from the Zodiac, and like in the movie, the Zodiac Killer never did this but it was certainly enough to terrify everyone who knew about the letter and the threat.

Wrong: Michael Mageau's Eye Witness Account

Although it's true that in real life Michael Mageau did claim that it was Arthur Leigh Allen who attacked him and his girlfriend and he narrowly survived,  Zodiac  seems to imply that this is an important part of the case at the very end of the movie.

In reality, even Mageau himself said there was no way he could be certain that it was Allen because he barely saw the man's profile, was disoriented by a bright flashing light and was shot at close range. Police didn't believe this to be valid or important evidence to the case because Mageau's eyewitness account was so fuzzy.

Right: Robert Graysmith's Obsession

The movie focuses on various people involved in the case, but the main focus is Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) . Graysmith was a cartoonist at The Chronicle, one of the newspapers Zodiac communicated with. He eventually began his own investigation and wrote a book on the subject.

The movie shows Graysmith becoming consumed with the case and his obsession leads to the end of his marriage. By Graysmith's own admission, this is accurate as the investigation took over all aspects of his life and his family-life suffered as a result.

Wrong: Paul Avery

Another one of the main characters in the film is Paul Avery ( Robert Downey Jr. ), the crime reporter at The Chronicle. Avery was a central figure in some aspects of the investigation and was indeed named by the killer as a future target, but large aspects of his characterization in the film are fictionized.

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While Avery and Graysmith did work together, their close collaboration on the Zodiac case is something largely invented by the film. Avery is also depicted as falling into poor health and living a reclusive life, still obsessed with the killings. Those close to him have claimed this is inaccurate.

Right: Arthur Leigh Allen As Suspect

Though the case remains unsolved, the movie does narrow in on one prime suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch). The movie shows Allen to be a favorite suspect of detective Dave Toschi ( Mark Ruffalo ) who has a mountain of circumstantial evidence linking him to the crimes.

Allen was indeed a person of interest in the case who Toschi favored as the killer. Also, much of the evidence against Allen that is presented in the movie was real. He did wear boots that matched the crime scene footprints, he did wear a watch that had a Zodiac symbol, and he did talk to friends about ideas that eerily match the later killings.

Wrong: Cecelia Shepard And Bryan Hartnell

The second Zodiac attack depicted in the film is of Cecelia Shepard and Bryan Hartnell on September 27, 1969. The film shows the young couple cuddling by a lake when they are approached by a masked gunman who then tied them up and stabbed them. Only Hartnell survived the attack.

While the movie follows Hartnell's account of the attack incredibly closely, the movie does make one small and false insinuation. The scene gives the impression that the two are a romantic couple whereas they were simply friends at the time. Interestingly, Fincher added in a line about Hartnell's major in school to hint they might not be as close as we'd assume.

Right: Rick Marshall

One of the tensest scenes in the film finds Graysmith visiting a colleague of suspect Rick Marshall. Graysmith thinks he finds a sample of Marshall's writing that perfectly matches Zodiac, but the man informs him it is his own writing. As Graysmith's nervousness increases, he hears footsteps from the floor above and leaves in a hurry.

Remarkably, this is based on a real incident Graysmith claims happened to him while looking into Marshall as a suspect. Some other investigators have theorized this friend of Marshall's helped him in some way.

Wrong: Woman In The Car

Another extremely disturbing scene finds a woman and her baby who is given a ride by a stranger after being stranger on the highway. While the man appears to be a helpful good Samaritan at first, he soon threatens to kill them both before the woman escapes the car with her child.

This is based on a true incident, and not only did the woman claim it was the Zodiac in the car, but the killer took credit for it in another letter. However, as time past, police began to have major doubts that this was indeed the Zodiac.

Right: Zodiac's Lies

Though the movie does seem to present that particular case as one involving the Zodiac, it also mentions the doubt surrounding the case which leads to an interesting revelation. Paul Avery identifies a number of crimes Zodiac claimed credit for without offering any evidence, unlike the other murders. This suggests Zodiac was trying to appear more deadly than he really was.

This is something that police discovered as the investigation went on and Zodiac's letters continued. He took credit for murders they knew he had nothing to do with. Many see this as the killer's attempt to remain in the spotlight.

Wrong: Codebreaker

The movie shows that the first letter Zodiac sent to newspapers included a code which he claimed included his identity. While the killer presented it as a brilliant and unbreakable code, it was solved fairly quickly by a high school teacher and his wife days after it was published.

An interesting aspect that the movie leaves out is that the man who broke the code became a suspect in the crimes for a short time. Police were suspicious of how quickly he broke the code as well as some very circumstantial evidence. Many believe it was simply a desperate movie by police.

Right: The Zodiac On Live Television

The movie does a great job of showing how the public became so obsessed with the Zodiac and the story around him. This is best seen in the sequence in which the killer calls into a news program live on the air to speak with Melvin Belli (Brian Cox).

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The idea of a serial killer calling into a news show seems so farfetched, but this incident really did happen. While there's no way to confirm that it was the real killer who was speaking on live television, given the killer's apparent desire for the spotlight, it's entirely possible he would do such a thing.

Wrong: Other Suspects

While the movie doesn't come to any conclusions about the case, it does strongly hint at the fact that Arthur Leigh Allen was the Zodiac killer. This isn't surprising as much of the movie is based on Robert Graysmith's book who came to that eventual conclusion.

However, the movie does ignore some important things to arrive at Allen as such a convincing suspect, which is something Graysmith has been criticized for. There were several other key suspects, including Richard Gaikowski who, similar to Allen, had a lot of circumstantial evidence against him. It also fails to mention Allen's DNA failing to match DNA found at the scene of one of the crimes.

NEXT: 10 Best Serial Killer Movies From The 70s

• David Fincher

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Just the facts: two homicide detectives, a crime eporter and a political cartoonist spend decades knocking themselves out to atch a serial killer who never (officially) gets caught. Careers, arriages, even sanity fall victim to obsession. That’s Zodiac , a eticulous, mind-bending, nonstop mesmerizer of a movie that needed another ie-hard fanatic to make it pop onscreen.

And who better for the job than he brilliant, driven David Fincher, a director known to put his actors hrough more than 100 takes to get the nuances he wants. He raised the ar on kinky freaks in Se7en , plumbed the roots of trickery in The Game , tracked delusion to its core in Fight Club and used a prowling camera o dig out psychological truth in Panic Room . Zodiac , the name of the sycho who ted terrorizing the San Francisco Bay Area in 1968 and ormented the press with coded messages, is right up the director’s dark lley. Fincher was seven and living in the kill zone when his dad told im that the Zodiac had threatened to shoot kids like him as they tepped off their school bus.

It’s a wonder Fincher wasn’t traumatized by his nut job, who inspired the fictional killer Scorpio in Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry . Primal fear is hard to explain away, but the characters n Fincher’s film try to do just that by cutting a monster down to uman size. At the head of the list is cartoonist Robert Graysmith, played by Jake Gyllenhaal with just the right blend of smarts and geek-boy ixation. Graysmith, a shy newbie at The San Francisco Chronicle , is ripped by the first letter, which begins, “This is the Zodiac speaking.” or more details, he hounds the paper’s ace crime reporter, Paul Avery the reliably amazing Robert Downey Jr.), who in turn hounds the SFPD’s otshot homicide inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and his partner, illiam Armstrong (Anthony Edwards). The contentious bond among these en will stretch into years, even when Armstrong drops out and no arrests re made. It’s Graysmith who will later write the two books, Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked , that serve as the film’s source material, bolstered by resh investigations launched by Fincher and screenwriter James anderbilt.

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That’s a lot of dogs to be gnawing on one bone. But make no istake, you will be hooked and creeped out big time. Fincher stages the irst murder with blood-chilling intensity. A hooded killer walks up to a ar parked on a lovers’ lane and opens fire on a teen couple (he urvives, she doesn’t). It could be the stuff of a typical CSI episode — iolent porn sandwiched between commercials. But Fincher transcends xploitation. We feel the swiftness of the crime, the shock of what follows nd the reeling sense of life snuffed out in seconds.

Later, in one of he most realistic and wrenching depictions of murder in broad daylight, he Zodiac stalks a couple picnicking by a lake in Napa. Their serenity s interrupted when the Zodiac is suddenly on them with a knife, tabbing them repeatedly. Fincher lingers on the aftermath, of being left, rying for help, to bleed to death. These sequences, including the xecution of a cab driver on a suburban street, are paralyzing in their rutal immediacy. They need to be. It’s the human toll taken by the Zodiac, ho sparked copycat crimes across the country, that drives the rotagonists to keep hammering at this cold case even when the killings stop nd media interest wanes.

Fincher never sensationalizes these images. For he first time in his career, he’s dealing with real people and ranting them a respect denied by tabloids and Zodiac’s attempts to hype imself into a media headline. He achieves a near-documentary realism nhanced by high-definition camerawork from the gifted Harris Savides Elephant, Gerry ) that brings a gritty urgency to everything from the offices f cops and reporters to the streets where the crimes were actually ommitted. The film calls to mind two 1970s classics, Francis Coppola’s The Conversation and Alan Pakula’s All the President’s Men , in its vocation of time and place, with added resonance from the striking music by avid Shire, who scored both of those films. Fincher’s shrewd use of ongs to bridge time finds a nerve-jangling menace in Donovan’s “Hurdy urdy Man” with its intimations of “unenlightened shadows cast.”

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Still, t’s the people in those shadows who draw you in. Gyllenhaal pulls us nexorably into a mind-set that ultimately wrecks Graysmith’s marriage to elanie (Chloe Sevigny). And Ruffalo is outstanding at showing us a attered Toschi — once enough of a supercop to be the model for Steve McQueen in Bullitt and Michael Douglas on TV’s The Streets of San rancisco — demoted out of homicide but still willing to assist Graysmith on is quest. The most dramatic decline is experienced by Avery, whose ddiction to the case is trumped by his self-destructive jones for booze nd cocaine. Downey gives a blazing performance that runs the gamut from umor to heartbreak. All the actors excel. Brian Cox is sharply funny s celeb lawyer Melvin Belli, and John Carroll Lynch will haunt your ightmares as Arthur Leigh Allen, the suspect the cops dismiss and raysmith comes to focus on.

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Put your whodunit expectations away when you isit Zodiac . It’s the process that pins you to your seat. A film this ainstaking and tenacious won’t appeal to those in it strictly for the lood lust. Fincher is a powerhouse filmmaker, but he doesn’t pander. He hakes you up in ways you don’t see coming. Thanks to him, the still-new ovie year, littered with barf-inducing Hollywood formula (hello, Norbit ), has busted out with something unique and unmissable.

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Zodiac (2007) Movie Ending and Themes Explained: Is Arthur Leigh Allen the Zodiac Killer?

Recounting the tale of an elusive serial killer, an obsessed cartoonist, and an intelligent police investigator, David Fincher’s exceptional crime thriller, “Zodiac (2007),” became one of the best movies of the century. Fincher outdid himself as he picked up the script centered around the ominous killings of locals in the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Despite the meticulously executed investigations, the identity of the killer, to this date, remains unknown.

Fincher, with his knack for crafting unconventional stories that dive into the complexities of the human mind, created a bone-chilling plot that exposes the wild side of the human mind. Consistent with his preferred selection of themes, this flick once again took a unique take on obsession, much like his past works. With movies about obsessive murderers, such as Se7en and Gone Girl , the director manifests a pattern in his creative techniques. His films primarily consist of protagonists who are fixated on a motive that drives them forward to the unthinkable depths of untamed human behavior. Most of his work resonates with a recursive pattern in terms of storytelling. Though dynamic and appreciable, the characters in his movies are merely a means to dictate and carry the plot, which has a higher purpose when it comes to exposing the vision of societal darkness.

“Zodiac” presents the tale of the investigations that occurred to catch the dark-minded, gruesome killer who made homicide look like a crooked game that screamed ‘Catch me if you can.’ The film revolves around Robert Graysmith ( Jake Gyllenhaal ), a cartoonist working at the “Chronicle,” who gets fascinated by the unresolved murder mystery and is determined to expose the serial killer’s true identity. Along with him, Fincher put two more significant actors in the frame: Robert Downey Jr. as Paul Avery, who works as a crime reporter, and Mark Ruffalo as Dave Toschi, a police inspector assigned to the ‘Zodiac’ case. 

In addition to that, “Zodiac” is regarded highly in terms of its exalted cinematic achievements. The stunning transition from the late ’60s to the early ’70s is immaculately smooth with legit references. The locations and set production were all a product of descriptions collected from natives and individuals closely associated with the region and helped shape the tangible face of Fincher’s imagination. Rather than focusing heavily on the serial killer’s crimes, the movie offers a detailed look into the decades-long investigations that took place. Lengthy scenes with extended dialogues were captured well in the broad frames of the film, stretching its perception and offering a peek into the eventful investigations regarding the ‘Zodiac’ case. Dark, vibrant tones add more to the beauty of the film, highlighting its adherence to the uncanny plot and, most importantly, the mind of Robert Graysmith.

Zodiac (2007) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:

“the most dangerous animal of them all”.

The film begins with a couple driving to the lover’s lane on the night of the 4th of July. The two are talking when they see a car approaching them, stopping behind them, and then leaving. Seconds later, it reappears, and this time, a man comes out and shoots the couple, leaving shock waves in the audience. However, the young guy named Mike survives the shootout. At the office of “The San Francisco Chronicle,” a month later, unsettling chaos emerges with the arrival of anonymous letters, encrypted by a killer who calls himself the ‘Zodiac.’ 

He claims to have his identity hidden in the ciphers and asks them to publish it, warning that he’d kill a dozen more people if they don’t comply. At the Chronicle’s office, Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist, takes a keen interest in the Zodiac case and vaguely mentions that the killer’s identity won’t be found in this cipher. Being a subordinate, he is ignored by the editorial staff and Paul Avery, the paper’s crime reporter. Days later, after the codes are published in the newspapers, a couple cracks the code and sends the Chronicle the decoded letter. 

After reading the letter, Avery gets back to Graysmith, intrigued by his guess about Zodiac’s unrevealed identity. Graysmith reads the letter and begins to think about the clues mentioned in his letter. After thinking hard, Graysmith reveals that Zodiac references the film “The Most Dangerous Game.” This film features a character named Mark Zaroff who hunts people for sport, inferring that the mentioned phrase “The most dangerous animal of all” is man himself.

The Prime Suspect: Arthur Leigh Allen

After the initial decoding, the Zodiac remains silent for two weeks until another murder occurs. Zodiac sends pieces of bloodstained cloth belonging to the victim Paul Stine, a taxi driver shot in the Presidio Heights districts, to the Chronicle. Later on, Inspectors Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) are assigned to lead the Zodiac Case and begin investigating the crime scene. The anonymous letters from Zodiac never stop arriving. 

Meanwhile, Dave Toschi gets a call about someone claiming to be Zodiac who wants to call on the Jim Dunbar show and talk to lawyer Melvin Belli for counsel. As the killer gets on the line, he takes deep breaths and introduces himself as the Zodiac. The police try to trace his call while he opens up about his headaches and that he doesn’t want to go to the gas chamber. Belli tries to engage and make him agree to meet him later, but nothing comes out of that interaction. 

In 1971, Toschi, Armstrong, and Mulanax visit a suspect in the Vallejo case named Arthur Leigh Allen. Throughout the interrogation, Allen remains calm and keeps on giving logical explanations for his links with the case. Toschi notices he is wearing a watch with “Zodiac” written on its dial. Allen claims it was a present from his mother. Toschi, for some reason, is not convinced and sends Zodiac’s letters to the handwriting expert. Shockingly, his writing doesn’t match Allen’s even though he is ambidextrous, and Toschi runs out of evidence that goes against Allen. 

Graysmith’s Unbound Obsession

Paul Avery, the crime reporter, receives death threats from Zodiac. He slowly falls into drug addiction after arguing with the police inspectors about the Zodiac. His condition worsens, taking a toll on his sanity and causing him to move to Sacramento Bay by 1978. On the other hand, Robert Graysmith, the cartoonist, cannot get the Zodiac out of his head. He does not settle for the slow progress in the investigation and begins his search. He approaches Toschi, who is already drifting apart from the case and convinces him of new leads concerning the case. Graysmith impresses Toschi by revealing the missing library record of the cipher-related books. 

Toschi tells him that he cannot help him directly as he doesn’t have the authority, so he directs him to other police stations where the Zodiac investigations are taking place. While investigating, Graysmith finds new leads, one about the killer’s connection to Darlene and anonymous phone calls that were made to the victim before she was murdered. To learn more about the phone calls, Graysmith visits Belli and discovers that the Zodiac called his house on December 18th, saying it was his birthday, so he must kill. Since no one died around that date, Graysmith believes it is a dead end and leaves this detail.

His unhealthy obsession with the zodiac continues, resulting in him falling apart from his wife and family. He also receives anonymous phone calls where the person on the other end of the line just breathes heavily. One night, he gets an anonymous tip about the Zodiac. The man on the phone tells him Zodiac’s name is ‘Rick Marshall.’ Graysmith follows the tip and ends up visiting Linda, a suspect who may identify Rick Marshall. She discloses that the strange guy at the party who scared Darlene was known as Leigh, not Rick. 

Zodiac (2007) Movie Ending Explained:

Is arthur leigh allen the zodiac killer.

Linda’s information convinces Graysmith that Allen must be the Zodiac, but none of the police investigators cooperate with him. He realizes that his hands are tied and that he cannot proceed with this case. His wife Melanie (Chloe Sevigny) stops by his house to drop off divorce papers, and Graysmith is left contemplating that his obsession has cost him his family. As he goes through the files, he discovers Arthur Leigh Allen’s driving license, where his date of birth is mentioned, which is December 18, a date Zodiac confessed was his birthday. He rushes to Toschi’s house in the heavy rain and screams frantically, grabbing his attention. 

The two head to a diner, where Graysmith tells him about all possible connections between Arthur Leigh Allen and the murder cases. He explains Allen’s life during the years when the criminal activities were actively going on. Allen molested a child, and the manhunt started eight months after that incident. After the police interviewed him, he left the country for three years, and the letters stopped. Allen began sending letters again when the police decisively moved away from him. And as he got arrested for four more years, the letters stopped coming and were only received four years later when he got out of jail in 1977. 

Five years later, in 1983, Graysmith visits a hardware store in Vallejo, where Allen is working as a salesman. He stands opposite Allen, facing him directly. Allen politely asks if he can help him with anything, and Graysmith says, “No.” The two stare at each other, silently weighing one another, and the audience can sense the tension between them. 

Seven and a half years pass (1991), and the scene displays a bookshelf on the Ontario International Airport where Robert Graysmith’s book “Zodiac” is sitting as a best-seller. In a room, Mike Mageau is being interviewed by the police. As a survivor of the unresolved murder case, he is shown photographs of several criminals and is asked to identify the one he thinks is the Zodiac. He points at Arthur Leigh Allen’s picture. He also states that on a scale of 10, he is positive to an eight and that he is the one who attacked him on the 4th of July.

Before the ending credits roll, the audience is shown a black screen where text appears. It is written that before the police could charge Allen with the Zodiac’s crimes, he died of a heart attack. Moreover, a DNA sample run in 2002 failed to match Allen’s. The case was officially shut down in 2004, but at the time of the film’s release, it remained open in Napa Country, Solano County, and Vallejo. Robert Graysmith also revealed that he had never received anonymous phone calls since Allen’s death.

How Can Allen Leigh Arthur Be the Zodiac Killer?

There is enough evidence against Arthur Leigh Allen that screams that he is the culprit in the Zodiac case. The first evidence against him is his Zodiac watch, which points to his link to the name. The military boots and gloves that are found on the crime scenes also match his size, not to forget the timeline of murders and the anonymous letters coinciding with Allen’s whereabouts. Besides that, his love for the book “The Most Dangerous Game” and misspelled ‘Christmas’ spellings make him the prime suspect in the case. He also lived close to Darlene, about 50 yards away. Darlene’s friends confess that the strange guy they know is called “Lee.”

Why Arthur Leigh Allen Wasn’t Arrested?

Arthur Leigh Allen was never arrested for his crimes because of the lack of physical evidence. Graysmith collected enough circumstantial evidence but couldn’t prove it in court. The fingerprints and handwriting did not match Arthur’s, leaving him both innocent and untouchable. 

Zodiac (2007) Major Themes Analysed

Obsession and passion.

Passionate characters like Robert Graysmith are some of the most obsessive characters who do not abandon the case of the elusive killer, even when they fear it’ll be a dead-end. Despite being a cartoonist and an unofficial investigator, Graysmith’s dedication to the case is due to pure passion. Furthermore, he has to give up his family for his obsession, yet he doesn’t think twice before investing the most important years of his life in getting information about the killer. Paul Avery is another character who is consumed by the Zodiac case. His paranoia and addiction get the best of him, and it all starts with the Zodiac’s warning. 

Role of Media

Media plays an integral role throughout the film, investigating and determining its turn to chase the culprit. The Zodiac Killer sends anonymous messages to the newspaper The Chronicle and reveals his plans and proceedings through them. It served as the only means to spread public awareness about a serial killer on the loose and allowed the case to be studied further. 

Law and Justice

The criminal investigations and Graysmith’s obsession with the case are all for bringing justice. Inspectors, journalists, and people from all other sectors have one goal in common: finding answers in this case so that justice can be served. Additionally, the boundaries of law enforcement play a vital role in determining the fate of Arthur Leigh Allen. Lack of evidence, and America’s law of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ works in the killer’s favor. Despite having enough circumstantial evidence, there isn’t much that could be done to arrest the killer.

Read More: A Decade On: Zodiac (2007)

Zodiac (2007) movie trailer.

Zodiac (2007) Movie Links: IMDb , Rotten Tomatoes , Wikipedia The Cast of Zodiac (2007) Movie: Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo Zodiac (2007) Movie Genre: Crime, Drama | Runtime: 2h 37 Mins

Where to watch zodiac.

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5 of the best free movies to stream on Tubi, Pluto TV, Amazon Freevee, and more this week (September 16)

Catch Tropic Thunder, Zodiac, Submarine, and more

The best free streaming services can’t compete with the likes of Netflix, Prime Video, and Max for headline-grabbing new movies and TV shows, but they do boast a surprisingly vast range of older titles for you to enjoy.

Last week’s roundup of the best free movies to stream included Blackberry , Margin Call , and 500 Days of Summer , and this week’s edition is similarly varied. Below, I’ve highlighted five of the best free movies to stream on Tubi, Pluto TV, Amazon Freevee, and other free streaming services over the coming days.

Tropic Thunder (Pluto TV)

Release date: September 2008 RT Score: 82% Length: 107 minutes Director: Ben Stiller Main cast: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Tom Cruise

Tropic Thunder feels like the sort of movie that just wouldn’t get made in 2024. This star-studded, noughties-era comedy follows a group of veteran actors who, while filming for a new Vietnam war flick, become embroiled in a real-life conflict with Southeast Asian natives (think Galaxy Quest with jungles and helicopters).

Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Matthew McConaughey, and Tom Cruise (yes, Tom Cruise) count among the film’s stellar ensemble cast, while Stiller himself directs. You’ll find Tropic Thunder streaming, for free, on Pluto TV.

The Hunt (Tubi, Kanopy, The Roku Channel)

Release date: May 2012 RT Score: 92% Length: 115 minutes Director: Thomas Vinterberg Main cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Annika Wedderkopp, Lasse Fogelstrøm

The first of many collaborations between Danish screen legends Mads Mikkelsen and Thomas Vinterberg, The Hunt – which is now streaming for free on Tubi, Kanopy, and The Roku Channel – is among the best foreign language films of the past 20 years. 

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Set in a small Danish village during the run-up to Christmas, the film follows the plight of a divorced kindergarten teacher, Lucas (Mikkelsen), who falls victim to mass hysteria after being wrongly accused of sexually abusing a young girl in his class. Sure, that sounds bleak – and The Hunt isn’t exactly a cheery affair – but this small-budget film is nonetheless an engrossing watch.

Zodiac (Hoopla, Pluto TV – leaving soon)

Release date: January 2009 RT Score: 90% Length: 157 minutes Director: David Fincher Main cast: J ake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Brian Cox

Longlegs may have dominated the horror movie conversation these past few months, but Oz Perkins’ atmospheric murder mystery takes more than a few cues from David Fincher’s filmography, among which is Zodiac .

This inspired-by-true-events thriller chronicles the manhunt for the Zodiac Killer, an infamous (and still possibly at large) serial killer who used letters, ciphers, and crime scene evidence to taunt investigators in the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s. Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr. all star in Zodiac , which serves as a great companion piece to Fincher’s best movie, Seven .

3:10 to Yuma (Tubi – leaving soon)

Release date: August 2007 RT Score: 89% Length: 122 minutes Director: James Mangold Main cast: Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Logan Lerman, Ben Foster

For some reason, James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma was my go-to Sunday afternoon movie when I was a kid. This star-studded remake of the 1957 Western of the same name follows a down-on-his-luck rancher (Bale) who agrees to help law enforcement officers transport a notorious outlaw (Crowe) to a prison-bound train.

Director James Mangold has since gone on to helm more commercially successful films ( Logan and Ford v Ferrari among them), but 3:10 to Yuma remains, for me, one of his most accomplished and re-watchable pictures. This one is now streaming for free on Tubi, but leaving soon, so act fast if you’re keen to see Russell Crowe in villainous cowboy mode.

Submarine (Amazon Freevee)

Release date: September 2010 RT Score: 88% Length: 97 minutes Director: Richard Ayoade Main cast: Craig Roberts, Yasmin Paige, Sally Hawkins, Noah Taylor

In the mood for something short and sweet this week? Look no further than Richard Ayoade’s charming 2010 indie fluck Submarine , which is now streaming on Amazon Freevee.

This coming-of-age novel adaptation stars Noah Taylor as Oliver Tate, an unpopular 15-year-old in rural Wales who finds himself torn between winning the affections of his charismatic classmate Jordana (Yasmin Paige) and stopping his mother (Sally Hawkins) from succumbing to her spiritual ex-lover Graham (Paddy Considine). As with 3:10 to Yuma , Submarine is leaving its free streaming service soon, so get watching ASAP.

For more free streaming coverage, read our recent roundups of the five movies with over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes on Plex , the five movies with over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes on Pluto TV  and the three movies on Amazon Freevee with over 80% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Axel is TechRadar's UK-based Phones Editor, reporting on everything from the latest Apple developments to newest AI breakthroughs as part of the site's Mobile Computing vertical. Having previously written for publications including Esquire and FourFourTwo, Axel is well-versed in the applications of technology beyond the desktop, and his coverage extends from general reporting and analysis to in-depth interviews and opinion.  Axel studied for a degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick before joining TechRadar in 2020, where he then earned an NCTJ qualification as part of the company’s inaugural digital training scheme.

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Latest certified fresh movies & tv, new reviews added, new tv this week.

• The Penguin 90%
• American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez
• Agatha All Along
• Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story
• Twilight of the Gods
• High Potential
• A Very Royal Scandal

Top 10 Box Office

• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice 77%
• Speak No Evil 85%
• Deadpool & Wolverine 79%
• Am I Racist?
• The Killer's Game 33%
• Alien: Romulus 80%
• It Ends With Us 57%
• The Forge 73%
• God's Not Dead: In God We Trust

Trailers & Videos

Speak no evil.

James McAvoy breaks down his process of becoming Paddy in Speak No Evil

The Wild Robot

Check out the official trailer for The Wild Robot starring Lupita Nyong’o!

Smile 2 , Terrffier 3 , and More

Our recommendations for what horror films to watch this Fall

Pachinko : Season 2

Lee Min-ho is spilling some season 2 secrets

The Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Cast on Reuniting with Tim Burton

Plus, how Micheal Keaton brought back his iconic character

Movie & TV guides

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