Is Zodiac Killer Project another true crime story? Details examined as Charlie Shackleton releases the meta-documentary

Charlie Shackleton, a British documentary filmmaker known for experimental works like Paint Drying, steps into the Zodiac Killer spotlight with Zodiac Killer Project. Released on November 21, 2025, by Music Box Films after premiering at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the NEXT Innovator Award.

The cast is minimal. Shackleton narrates and directs, with supporting voices from actors Guy Robbins and Lee Nicholas Harris in off-camera roles, as well as archival nods to Lafferty.

Is it just another true crime story? No, it's a sharp critique of the genre itself, questioning if endless retellings obscure more than they reveal, rather than chasing the unidentified killer's ciphers and letters.

This 92-minute meta-documentary is inspired by Lyndon E. Lafferty's 2012 book, "The Zodiac Killer Cover Up: The Silenced Badge." Lafferty, a retired California highway patrol officer, claimed a Solano County sheriff's deputy covered up evidence pointing to a suspect in the late-1960s murders. Shackleton's project fell apart in 2022 when rights negotiations collapsed, leaving him with location footage from Vallejo and a booth full of improvised narration.

No direct ties to David Fincher's 2007 Zodiac film exist; Shackleton's focus stays on documentary pitfalls, not dramatised chases. He told The Film Stage:

“I feel like that is the only saving grace of not getting to make the film, is that we don’t need to retell the story of the Zodiac Killer for the thousandth time.”

He added:

“While making this film, it did dawn on me that, of course, that is sort of the thing every true-crime filmmaker says, and maybe we all believe that we’re gonna make the one that rises above and resists the fatal flaws of the genre. So I don’t know if I’m entirely confident now that I could have done that.. So this film it’s formally about as far away as you can get from true crime. I think that it has real benefits and real costs.

I’m really delighted that I’ve made something so idiosyncratic that’s nonetheless getting this great life, where it’s being seen around the world and often in theatres, which is not a privilege most true-crime films get these days. But I’m still aware that that audience, however successful the movie is, is going to be a fraction the size of your average Netflix true-crime series. So there’s still a trade-off.”

Zodiac Killer Project: Charlie Shackleton’s meta-documentary turns the genre inside out

Shackleton's original pitch leaned on Lafferty's obsession with a low-profile suspect dismissed by law enforcement. He scouted Bay Area spots, such as empty parking lots in Vallejo, shooting 16mm establishing shots with cinematographer Xenia Patricia. However, legal hurdles killed it; his lawyer, Sean McTernan, flagged barriers related to proprietary details. 

Pivoting, he recorded 10-hour sessions in a London booth, surrounded by notes and footage. Editing focused on a stream-of-consciousness voiceover over static landscapes with crime-scene tape fluttering in the wind, footprints in dirt and blood-like shadows on pavement.

No victims' stories or cipher breakdowns here as the Zodiac becomes a backdrop for genre critique. Shackleton breaks down clichés scene by scene: ominous title cards with birds fleeing, microfiche reels, stern cop interviews, walls of faded photos.

It's an essay film, blending self-doubt with wry humour. Shackleton admits his love-hate relationship" with true crime, calling it a commercial lure that twisted into moral quicksand. At Sundance, he said:

"’I'm not a filmmaker who works well with total freedom. I like restrictions and limits and something to push against. So even in the instant of finding out we couldn’t make the [original] documentary, it was agonizing, but there was probably already the glimmer of a thought of, ‘This is like the ultimate restriction: not being able to make the film. At all.'"

Does Zodiac Killer Project count as true crime? Sort of, but flipped. It skips the killer's lore for a takedown of how docs like it peddle drama over facts, re-enactments that coerce confessions, B-roll that builds false tension and leaps that prioritise chills over truth. Clips from Netflix shows highlight the saturation.

Shackleton explained:

"The idea of devoting time and energy to something and then having nothing exist is obviously an inevitable part of the filmmaking process, but one I find very frustrating." 

Music Box Films, handling distribution, praised the result as a "revelatory rumination" in press notes. No Zodiac movie link is established, and the real case's shadow looms, but Shackleton avoids retreading Fincher's ground. 

Watch Zodiac Killer Project in limited theaters starting November 21, 2025, via Music Box Films, with New York as the first stop, followed by San Francisco's Roxie Theatre from November 24 to 30, with an expansion nationwide in December. 

Stay tuned for more such updates!