I'm tired of movies/books/TV shows about serial killers. It's such an overdone idea - I think there must be 100 times as many movies about serial killers as there are actual serial killers in the world. I don't get off on morbidity, so I skip most of it.

That said, what makes Zodiac (directed by the awesome David Fincher, released in March 2007) so compelling and different? The biggest reason is that it's real. The movie is best described as "historical fiction" - it bends some characters around to help create a good story, but the man who called himself "The Zodiac" at the middle of it all really did terrorize the San Francisco bay area during the late 1960s / early 1970s, and was never caught. The film stays very true to the facts of the case - not hard to do, as the story of the Zodiac is more captivating than most crime fiction.

The movie gets through the Zodiac's killings fairly quickly and then shifts its focus to the people that try to unravel the mystery - first the police, and years later, amateur Zodiac-phile Robert Graysmith. He becomes obsessed with the Zodiac and in some ways, that's what the film is about - the drive to find a concrete answer to a long-standing mystery, when in reality, we may have to learn to live with the fear and ambiguity. Graysmith seems certain that the Zodiac was Arthur Leigh Allen, but it's never been proven (beyond a mountain of circumstantial evidence), and since Allen died in 1992, we'll likely never know for sure. And there are more than a few people who disagree with Graysmith's conclusions.

When I saw this movie, I became temporarily obsessed with it too. I devoured Graysmith's best-seller about the Zodiac killings, along with anything I could find online.

There's also the matter of the still-unsolved 340-symbol cipher that the Zodiac mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle on 11/8/69. Graysmith (and a few others) have submitted what they feel are solutions to the cipher, but they've never been accepted by the authorities (they're sloppy). I fantasize about cracking the code and revealing some previously unknown fact that points more conclusively to Allen as the Zodiac - and I even have a way to try it that may not have been attempted before (writing a computer program that uses an evolutionary algorithm to figure it out). One day, when I get more time, I'm going to give it a shot.

Memorable moments from the movie:

-- "Hurdy Gurdy Man" by Donovan, played during the first Zodiac killing, at the very beginning of the movie. I'll never be able to hear that song again without getting chills (including during the film's credits).

-- The second killing, which I can't watch - it's just too disturbing. Reading about it in the book almost made me pass out (it's much worse in the book than in the movie).

-- SFPD Inspector Armstrong attempting to coordinate via phone with the Napa and Vallejo Police Departments. What a jurisdictional and information-sharing nightmare - is it any better, today?

-- Dave Toschi losing it when the evidence (handwriting, fingerprints, ballistics) says that Arthur Leigh Allen is not the Zodiac; much later, Toschi accepting Graysmith's contention that Allen must have been Zodiac: "Jesus christ."

-- Graysmith staring down Allen at the hardware store. This is the "money shot" scene of the movie.

-- Mike Mageau (Zodiac survivor and only person to have seen the killer's face) finally turning up in 1991, in the movie's final scene, and identifying Allen as the man who shot him. How would the Zodiac case be different if that had taken place twenty years earlier? Wow.

All in all, I love this movie. Definitely worth checking out, if you haven't seen it.

EDIT: Boy, this site really pokes a lot of holes in the movie's (and the book's) facts. Maybe it really wasn't Allen. Maybe the Zodiac is still out there...