Zodiac at FACT, Liverpool
Tom Grieve, Cinema Editor
Fans of David Fincher have had to settle for the small screen as of late, with the director working for Netflix on two seasons of the his excellent serial killer procedural Mindhunter. The icy aesthetic and attention to nuts and bolts detail that define his televisual depiction of the beginnings of FBI profiling are all present in his 2007 film, Zodiac. Centred around the true story of the unsolved, cryptic Zodiac killings that terrorised the San Francisco Bay Area from the late sixties to the early seventies. Fincher’s film draws upon the talent of actors Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. to delve into the destructive obsession that these types of crime can inspire in detectives, both amateur and professional. A special mention must go to the films studied period design and the stunning night time cinematography by the late Harris Savides, the latter of which made an early case for the potential of digital camerawork in feature films.
