¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019

Sidebar (1)

A number of titles that don't really register as “horror” (and thus would be out of place on the main ¡Qué horror! rundown), but titles that should nonetheless be of interest…

LAISSEZ BRONZER LES CADAVRES

(LET THE CORPSES TAN)

(August 2017)

Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani (familiar to these parts from ¡Qué horror! 2011 Auxiliary title Amer, and L’Étrange Couleur des Larmes de ton Corps, from the main ¡Qué horror! 2014 rundown) are back with Laissez bronzer les Cadavres (Let the Corpses Tan).

Think of it as a fragmentary, modern day French language spaghetti western, adapted from the novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jean-Pierre Bastid.

Stylized genre-fueled cinema at its wildest…

THE WITCH IN THE WINDOW

(July 2018)

Andy Mitton, co-director/-writer of ¡Qué horror! 2011 title Yellowbrickroad, goes solo on The Witch in the Window.

Reuniting with Yellowbrickroad’s Alex Draper, Mitton brings us a film that, while having the threads of a horror film running through it, ultimately resolves into an emotionally resonant, hauntingly poignant tapestry that really isn’t a horror movie at all.

It’s quiet and deliberately paced, and to say anything more would tip potential viewers off, so I’ll need to leave it at that.

If you watched and appreciated Yellowbrickroad, then you really should check this one out, if only to see what Mitton is capable of without Jesse Holland’s collaboration.

(I really should get around to watching 2016’s We Go On, as well as their contribution to Chilling Visions: 5 Senses of Fear, “Listen”…)

LOVE, DEATH & ROBOTS

(March 2019)

Brought to us by Deadpool’s Tim Miller (credited as Creator, one of the Exec Producers, and director of one of the segments) and David Fincher (one of the other co-Exec Producers), Love, Death & Robots is adult animation by way of Netflix.

It’s 18 short films, largely (but not exclusively) science fiction, largely (but not exclusively) computer animated.

Of particular note from my perspective:

“The Witness” – written and directed by Alberto Mielgo;

“Good Hunting” – directed by Oliver Thomas, based on the short story by Ken Liu, adapted script by Philip Gelatt*;

“Fish Night” – directed by Damien Nenow, based on the short story by Joe R. Lansdale, adapted script by Philip Gelatt; [I’ve always loved this one, which opens the By Bizarre Hands collection]

“Zima Blue” – directed by Robert Valley, based on the short story by Alastair Reynolds, adapted script by Philip Gelatt; [this is the segment that got me sniffling…]

“Ice Age” – directed by Miller, based on the short story by Michael Swanwick, adapted script by Philip Gelatt; [Mary Elizabeth Winstead! Yay!]

and two of the segments adapted from John Scalzi short stories:

“Three Robots” and “Alternate Histories” – both directed by Victor Maldonado and Alfredo Torres, based on “Three Robots Experience Objects Left Behind From the Era of Humans for the First Time” and “Missives from Possible Futures #1: Alternate History Search Results,” adapted scripts by Philip Gelatt

Maldonado and Torres also co-directed the third segment based on a Scalzi short story (“When the Yogurt Took Over”), also surreally fun and funny, though I prefer the segments I noted above.

Lansdale’s “The Dump” is also adapted here, as is Reynolds’ “Beyond the Aquila Rift.”

(I’ve also always loved Reynolds’ “Digital to Analogue” from the In Dreams anthology. Edited by Paul J. McAuley and Kim Newman, In Dreams was billed as “A Celebration of the 7-Inch Single in All-Original SF and Horror Fiction.”)**

In case you want to check out some of the source material of Love, Death & Robots, some of the original short stories can be found online, like Lansdale's “Fish Night,” Scalzi’s “Missives from Possible Futures #1: Alternate History Search Results” and “When the Yogurt Took Over: A Short Story,” as well as Liu’s “Good Hunting.”

* Gelatt is no stranger to these parts, from ¡Qué horror! 2012 Candidate The Bleeding House and ¡Qué horror! 2018 title, They Remain.

If my count’s correct, Gelatt adapted 15 of the 16 segments based on other writers’ work.

** Incidentally, the 70th anniversary of the 7-inch single was March 15, the same day Netflix unleashed Love, Death & Robots.

(Laissez bronzer les Cadavres OS courtesy of screenanarchy.com; Let the Corpses Tan, The Witch in the Window, and Love, Death & Robots OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2018

The Wrap-Up

And there we are, this year’s 10(+1) titles.

I can only hope that the next 12 months will result in enough Candidates to give us back our usual 13 slots.

In the meantime, those titles that I watched in the past 12 months that didn’t quite cross completely over into “horror” territory, but nevertheless deserve your attention.

THOROUGHBREDS

(January 2017)

“First it was borderline personality, then severe depression, now she thinks I'm antisocial with schizoid tendencies. She's basically just flipping to random pages of the DSM and throwing medications at me.

“But at the end of the day, I have a perfectly healthy brain. It just doesn't contain feelings. And that doesn't necessarily make me a bad person. It just means I have to work a little harder than everybody else to be good.”

Think of this black comedy as the brainier, more class-conscious cousin to Tragedy Girls.

It’s a laudable debut by writer/director Cory Finley, who’s got quite the cast here: Olivia Cooke, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Anton Yelchin (R.I.P.).

MOTHER!

(September 2017)

“I’ll just… get started on the apocalypse.”

Aronofsky examines the deep, fundamental differences between men and women… by going totally nuts on domesticity!

(And that’s just one of the things this film is about!)

!

MINDHUNTER

(October 2017)

“If what we’re doing doesn’t get under your skin, you’re either more screwed up than I thought, or you’re kidding yourself.”

Diving deep into the toxicity of insanity and violence, Mindhunter is an excellent companion piece to Fincher’s masterpiece, Zodiac.

SANTA CLARITA DIET Season 2

(March 2018)

So.

Many.

Good.

Quotes!

But let’s go with this one: “If you f*ckers try to leave me somewhere I will track you down and give you so much sh!t it will make the time you didn’t take me to see One Direction feel like a walk in the godd*mn park.”

O, Season 3, where art thou?

SLICE

(September 2018)

“… once some people get an idea in their head, they just can’t shake it. Frankly, I still believe cats can speak English. They just choose not to.

“Heh. Clever sons’a b!tches.”

Delivered (har!) to us by writer/director AustinVesely, Slice posits a world where ghosts and humans co-exist (if by “co-exist” we mean, relocating all the ghosts to “fifteen city blocks of abandoned homes and businesses”--thereafter known as Ghost Town--all in the name of “beautification”).

Plus, werewolves, witches, and demons, too!

Vesely also gets plus points for unexpectedly sneaking in David Lynch; guaranteed to get my attention!

And so it goes.

Another October, another ¡Qué horror! rundown.

Let’s all have a Happy Halloween, yeah?

And if you’re in the mood for some Halloween viewing, feel free to check out this year’s batch.

(Thoroughbreds, Mother!, Santa Clarita Diet Season 2, Slice OS’ courtesy of impawards.com; Mindhunter OS courtesy of avoir-alire.com.)

THE RUINS
(Review)

Four young American tourists are on a Mexican vacation, when a chance encounter with German Mathias (Joe Anderson, from Control and Across The Universe) sends them on a trek to an ancient Mayan temple, one that isn’t even on the guide books. This being an R-rated horror movie, it should come as no surprise then that there is something in the temple, an insidious, persistent horror that will put these pretty young things in terrible jeopardy.


Based on a Scott B. Smith novel, The Ruins is a crackerjack exercise in shudder-inducing horror with a commendable cast that includes two of young Hollywood’s dependable performers, The Black Donnellys’ Jonathan Tucker and Donnie Darko’s Jena Malone, as Jeff MacIntyre and girlfriend Amy.
There’s also some good work in here by Laura Ramsey (as Amy’s best friend, Stacy) and, as her boyfriend Eric, Shawn Ashmore, the younger Ashmore twin who plays Iceman in the X-Men franchise, not the one who plays Jimmy Olsen on Smallville (that one’s Aaron).
I’m particularly impressed with Ramsey, whose past work has been in some less-than-stellar fare like The Covenant and She’s The Man. She does a number of things in The Ruins I hadn’t thought her capable of, based on what I’d seen of her before.
If there’s an aspect of one performance here that could be a tad dodgy, it’s Anderson’s accent. But in the end, I’ve heard far worse, and for all I know, it could just be me, and Anderson’s accent is spot on.


At any rate, it’s partially to the credit of these young actors, who place believable characters before us, that the film works as well as it does, since—unlike in many a lesser horror film—we actually care if these kids live or die. There’s something very natural about the performances and the rapport between these characters that puts us in the middle of events as they unfold, that makes us sympathize with the dire situation they find themselves in.
And while Malone and her fellow actors rope us in and hold out attention, director Carter Smith and the other, apparently unrelated Smith (the writer, who adapted his own novel, though is credited without his middle initial as the film’s screenwriter) put all involved—particularly the audience—through a nasty cinematic wringer, the sort that makes you squirm and cringe, in very nice horror movie ways, mind.


It should also be noted that there’s some interesting work here by frequent Peter Jackson collaborator, production designer Grant Major, as well as some good cinematography by ace shooter Darius Khondji, who’s been DP for directors like David Fincher (Se7en and Panic Room), Danny Boyle (The Beach), and for the Caro-Jeunet tag team (Delicatessen and La cite des enfants perdus), as well as Jeunet in solo mode (Alien: Resurrection).
Think what you may of some of the films I’ve just mentioned (personally, I’m not a very big fan of Panic Room, The Beach, or Alien: Resurrection), but it’s hard to deny that they look good.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this ‘round these parts before, but I’ve always felt there are four saving graces in The Beach: 1) Tilda Swinton; 2) Robert Carlyle; 3) Virginie Ledoyen; and 4) Khondji’s cinematography.
Now, admittedly, The Ruins doesn’t have as potent a visual signature as some of the above films, like Se7en, for example. Nonetheless, it’s a well-shot horror film that actually does it work, and Khondji’s a part of that success.


As for anyone who isn’t familiar with the story’s premise, I’d prefer not to spoil the nature of the temple’s threat here, so I’ll just say this: if you, like little old me, love your horror, treat yourself to a walking tour of The Ruins.
Fun, fun, fun!!!

I’ll also leave you with this…
The Ruins has, as one of its executive producers, Ben Stiller.
Yes, that Ben Stiller. Derek Zoolander.
Now that, in itself, is a scary thought.*


Parting shot: Scott B. Smith also wrote the novel A Simple Plan, which, likewise, has a very good film adaptation directed by Sam Raimi.
If you haven’t seen it, it’s one of Raimi’s best.
In fact, why not make it a Scott B. Smith-adaptation double feature…

* Just for the record, I love Zoolander. Thus, when I think “Ben Stiller,” nasty, R-rated horror is the farthest thing from my mind…

(The Ruins OS courtesy of impawards.com [design by Ignition Print]; images courtesy of filmz.ru.)

reVIEW (46)
SARINUI CHUEOK
(MEMORIES OF MURDER)

Before Korean director Bong Joon-ho made a decidedly bigger splash with his creature feature Gwoemul (The Host), he had already made a significant impression on the global cinema stage with his 2003 serial killer procedural, Sarinui Chueok (Memories of Murder).

Set in 1986 and based on a real-life unsolved case, Sarinui Chueok chronicles the predations of a serial rapist and killer in the Korean countryside, and the unfolding investigation as local detective Park Doo-man (Song Kang-ho, seemingly ubiquitous in the best of Korean cinema, whom Bong would again collaborate with on Gwoemul) is made to work with city boy Inspector Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang-kyung), who’s just arrived from Seoul to help crack the case.
Despite a premise that sounds like a very run-of-the-mill serial killer thriller, what makes Sarinui Chueok stand out as a shining exemplar of the genre though is the manner in which Bong grounds the narrative in the time and place of its setting.

This is 1986, in the Korean boondocks, where crime scenes are routinely disrupted and compromised by unruly children, curious gawkers, the press, and runaway tractors; a pre-Internet Korea, without even the technology and equipment for a standard DNA check. It’s Grissom’s worst nightmare…
This low-tech procedural aspect, Bong’s film shares with David Fincher’s Zodiac, another brilliant serial killer thriller of recent vintage. But what makes Sarinui Chueok even more fascinating is how the narrative is truly of Korea, how the plot and script can’t simply be transplanted to, say, an American setting for an English-language remake.
This is Korea, where civil rights advocates will frankly be horrified at the manner in which suspects are treated and confessions extracted, making this the worst nightmare of any of the dozen or so Law and Order casts as well…

It’s this very particular national identity though that serves to make Sarinui Chueok Exhibit A in the case that you can always approach what seems to be a dead horse of a genre with new and vital eyes (something Fincher also managed to do with Zodiac and Showtime is doing with Dexter).
It’s also Exhibit A in the case of never making the mistake of aping the wrong conventions of a foreign film when you’re clearly not making one. (Think Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha, which tried so hard to be an Asian art film, when it clearly wasn’t.)
In this latter case, Sarinui Chueok also shares its commendable distinction with Exhibit B, Sebastian Cordero‘s Cronicas (Chronicles). Produced by Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron, Cronicas is likewise based on a real-life serial killer case, this time, in Ecuador. Though I do admit to finding Sarinui Chueok a far more absorbing film, Cronicas is nonetheless a very non-Hollywood approach to the genre that is very grounded in its Ecuadoran setting.

What also makes Sarinui Chueok such a memorable and distinctive entry in the annals of serial killer thrillers is its sense of humour; this is going to sound strange, but Sarinui Chueok is the funniest serial killer thriller I’ve ever seen.
Again, Bong takes that very particular Korean setting and sensibility, and finds strains of amusement in the proceedings, without overstepping the boundaries of good taste. Though there are chuckles and guffaws to be found here (mainly in the manner in which the investigation is conducted and the rural circumstances that surround it), we never truly forget that this is a gruesome case, whose details and deviant minutiae were alien, not just to the provincial townsfolk who were intimate with its disturbing leavings, but to the country as a whole.

And if you’re not totally convinced, then consider that Sarinui Chueok was the most watched film in South Korea in 2003, and is currently the fourth most viewed film in South Korea of all time. It also won Korea’s Grand Bell Awards for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Leading Actor (Song).
So if you’re looking for something different on the serial killer thriller front, or discovered Bong Joon-ho through Gwoemul, you should really check out Sarinui Chueok.
It’s effective, lyrical, and yes, funny, and that’s not something you can say about most serial killer thrillers.

Parting shot: Though the narrative is elegantly compressed in this film, the real-life case also mirrors the actual Zodiac case in that this was a terribly protracted investigation which was ultimately left unsolved: ten similar murders occurred between October 1986 and April 1991, and over 3,000 suspects were interrogated over its course.

Parting shot 2: Reviews of Bong’s Gwoemul and Fincher’s Zodiac can be found lurking in the Archive, where episodic recaps/reactions to Dexter also reside.

(Sarinui Chueok OS courtesy of soju22.net; images courtesy of seoulselection.com; Memories of Murder DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (50)
THE BEST OF THE VES 2008

And while Sunday night meant the BAFTAs for British film geeks (see Afterthoughts (49) in the Archive), over in La-La Land, American film geeks looked to the Kodak Theatre, where the 6th Annual VES Awards took place.
This year, the Visual Effects Society favoured Michael Bay’s Transformers with four awards, including the big one, Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects Driven Motion Picture.
Beyond Transformers though, the win that really made me go “Woot!” was…

Battlestar Galactica: Razor:
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Broadcast Miniseries, Movie or Special (Mike Gibson, Gary Hutzel, Sean Jackson, Pierre Drolet)

But, just for the record…

Transformers:
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects Driven Motion Picture (Scott Farrar, Shari Hanson, Russell Earl, Scott Benza)
Best Single Visual Effect of the Year [Desert Highway Sequence] (Scott Farrar, Shari Hanson, Shawn Kelly, Michael Jamieson)
Outstanding Models or Miniatures in a Motion Picture (Dave Fogler, Ron Woodall, Alex Jaeger, Brian Gernand)
Outstanding Compositing in a Motion Picture (Pat Tubach, Beth D’Amato, Todd Varizi, Mike Conte)

Additionally, the award for Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Broadcast Program or Commercial went to Nicklas Andersson, Mike Mellor, Sylvain Marc, and Florent DeLa Taille, for the Fatlip shots in Chemical Brothers – Salmon Dance.
Not exactly sure what that is, but hey, it’s the Chemical Brothers…

Steven Spielberg was also honoured with the VES Lifetime Achievement Award, for “the contribution that his vast body of work, as both a director and producer, has made to the art and science of visual effects.”

On the downside though, I’d just like to say it’s such a sad thing that not only did Zodiac get no love from the Oscars this year, but VES passed it over too.
Zodiac was up for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Motion Picture and Outstanding Created Environment in a Live Action Motion Picture (for Washington and Cherry), but lost out to Ratatouille and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (for The Maelstrom) respectively.
It’s pissy since David Fincher’s use of visual effects in Zodiac is so seamless, it’s practically invisible. I guess VES gave him an invisible award too…
Don’t worry, Mr. Fincher, the Iguana luvs ya…

For a downloadable PDF of the complete nominee list, go here, and to see a complete list of the winners, go here.

Parting shot: Reviews of Razor, Transformers, and Zodiac can be found in the Archive.

(Battlestar Galactica: Razor DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com; Transformers OS courtesy of wildaboutmovies.com; and Zodiac OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

reVIEW (32) 
SUSPECT ZERO

I only recently got to see the amusing faux documentary Incident at Loch Ness on cable, which got me some good looks at one Gabriel Beristain (cinematographer on Guillermo Del Toro’s Blade II and David S. Goyer’s The Invisible) and one Zak Penn (who directed Incident). Since Penn co-wrote Suspect Zero, I thought, “Why not?”
A few years back, E. Elias Merhige gave us Shadow of the Vampire, the canny exploration of creativity set against the backdrop of the filming of the classic German silent film Nosferatu. Now, Merhige returns with Suspect Zero.

“A 50 foot shark. Ever see one?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”

FBI Special Agent Tom Mackelway (Aaron Eckhart) has been relegated to the Albuquerque field office after a six-month psych evaluation following a much-publicized breach of Bureau protocol. As it turns out, Mackelway has become the obsession of Benjamin O’Ryan (Sir Ben Kingsley), a man who claims to be a former FBI agent, and is apparently a remote viewer, a psychic individual able to “see” things happening in distant locations. Shortly into the film, Mackelway becomes embroiled in the investigation of a man murdered by O’Ryan, a man whose eyelids have been sliced off.

If you’re beginning to get the impression that Suspect Zero is a grisly, disturbing piece of film, well, you’re partially right. Though certainly nowhere near as grisly and sordid as Seven was, Zero is a subtly disturbing exercise in the building of mood. With masterful editing and the use of eerie audio tracks and an eclectic and interesting musical score, Merhige manages to construct a movie that keeps itself afloat by virtue of atmosphere.

“Okay, but a serial killer, by definition, is condemned to repetition, isn’t he? I mean, isn’t that what he’s all about?”

Where Zero falters however, is its script (by Billy Ray and Zak Penn), which doesn’t allow itself to build any momentum to carry us forward. The fact that there doesn’t seem to be any sort of urgency to solving the case doesn’t help matters much either. Unlike The Silence of the Lambs or The Cell, where we are given a specific victim in current jeopardy to identify with, the victims in Suspect Zero are too much of ciphers for the audience to care about, except in the most abstract of ways.
Though not as handicapped as Seven is when stripped of its technique, Zero nonetheless lacks a certain something to make it a film of substance. Or perhaps, there is a little too much there to make it a tight, coherent piece. Much like the frantic and cluttered writing and art of O’Ryan, one detects a certain busy-ness of plot elements and details that only serve to obscure the merits of what could have been an excellent film.

Fortunately, we have Eckhart and Sir Kingsley to keep us occupied. Eckhart, with his past work with Neil LaBute (In The Company of Men, Possession), has proven to be an engaging performer, and Sir Kingsley brings both a borderline psychotic intensity and world-weary humanity to O’Ryan that is a privilege to watch. Given that, it’s sad that Carrie-Anne Moss, who proved in Memento that she can do more than just fancy martial arts on wireworks, isn’t given much to do by the script.

And once again, the script is the culprit, which I believe is the case with practically all the post-Silence of the Lambs serial killer thrillers, including its sequel Hannibal, and its prequel, Red Dragon. Not even Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter could save Copycat, and as I alluded to earlier, bereft of David Fincher’s moody technique, Seven’s script isn’t much to write home about either.

“We saw things men shouldn’t see. Agony. Torture. Evil.”

In trying, among other things, to posit a new sort of serial killer for the new millennium, the metaphorical “50 foot shark,” which may exist despite not having been seen by mortal eyes, Suspect Zero only succeeds in giving us a muddied view of a grab bag of ideas that never quite comes together into a cohesive whole. Perhaps if Ray and Penn had trimmed down some of the story’s minutiae, focused less on ideas and more on the story’s rhythm, Suspect Zero could have been the film it clearly wanted to be. As it is, though it isn’t a total waste of time, it also isn’t an entirely satisfying cinema experience.

Parting shot: Eckhart, who was also great in Jason Reitman’s Thank You For Smoking, will be seen in next year’s The Dark Knight, as D.A. Harvey Dent, a.k.a. The Man Who Will Be Two-Face.

(Suspect Zero OS courtesy of impawards.com; DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)

(The above review began life under the title, “A View To A Kill.”)

ZODIAC

(Review)

I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE
BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH
FUN

Among the handful of non-fiction reference books I own is a copy of Robert Graysmith‘s true crime novel, Zodiac. It’s one of three serial killer cases I’ve long been interested in, the other two being Jack the Ripper and the Green River Killer.
I’ve also been a long-time fan of David Fincher, ever since he raised the entire Alien trilogy to the level of allegory with Alien3. Of course, he’s also disappointed me in the past, with films like The Game, Panic Room, and to a certain extent, Se7en. So when I first heard he was taking on the Zodiac, I was both excited and anxious.
Right now, I’m relieved.

IT IS MORE FUN THAN
KILLING WILD GAME IN
THE FORREST BECAUSE
MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUE
ANAMAL OF ALL TO KILL

Based on Graysmith‘s non-fiction accounts, Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked: The Identity of America’s Most Elusive Serial Killer, the film follows the torturous investigation of the notorious serial killer who held San Francisco in a stranglehold of fear during his reign of terror.
Like Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac wrote letters to the local newspapers, taunting the police for their apparent inability to catch him. Caught in the wake of the killer’s trail were a number of policemen and newspaper men, some of whom would ultimately be consumed by the mystery of the elusive Zodiac. Principal among these were Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), crime reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, Detective Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), lead investigator on the case, and Graysmith himself (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), a political cartoonist for the Chronicle at the time of the Zodiac’s emergence onto the public stage.

SOMETHING GIVES ME THE
MOST THRILLING EXPERENCE

Toning down his trademark visual flair, Fincher succeeds in giving us a riveting and involving police procedural that isn’t just about unmasking the killer; what makes Zodiac a noteworthy piece is the fact that we also become witness to the effect the killer has on the people involved in the case, how the protracted investigation impacted on these people’s lives.
The principals are effective, particularly Gyllenhaal, one of the most talented actors of his generation. His Graysmith is an introverted ex-Eagle Scout, whose fascination with puzzles becomes the doorway that allows him access into the world of the Zodiac, a journey that skirts the borderlands of obsession.
That performance, along with Ruffalo’s and Downey Jr.’s, is ably supported by a (excuse me) killer cast which includes Brian Cox, Elias Koteas, John Terry, Donal Logue, Philip Baker Hall,* Chloe Sevigny, and Clea Duvall.

THE BEST PART OF IT IS THAE
WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN
IN PARADICE AND THEI HAVE
KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES

The script by James Vanderbilt (who also wrote the bland Darkness Falls and the enjoyable The Rundown) effectively takes the salient points of the case and presents us with a 2 hour 38 minute-long narrative that doesn’t feel long at all. For the duration, we are absorbed into this investigation that had so many other victims beyond the dead, an investigation hampered by pre-computer age technology and conflicting jurisdictions, an investigation that never quite got its man.
It’s a solid triumph for Fincher, who submits a serial killer thriller without the excessively contrived sordidness of Se7en; a film that, due to the strength of the source material and Vanderbilt’s script, also successfully evades the style-over-substance trap that holds prisoner not just Se7en, but Panic Room as well.

“My life has been one glorious hunt.”

With at least four previous films based on the Zodiac (among them, Alexander Bulkley’s The Zodiac, which was a perfectly good waste of Robin Tunney), as well as a host of fictional madmen loosely based on the killer (notably “Scorpio” in Dirty Harry and the “Gemini Killer” in The Exorcist III—a film director William Peter Blatty based on his own novel Legion—as well as the serial killer featured in the Millennium episode, “The Mikado”), the case has been visited often enough through celluloid.
But what Fincher and company do here is present the case as it unfolded, over the course of years, in a narrative that is as much about the investigators as it is about the murderer. In a world with a million CSIs and a gazillion CSI rip-offs, this is a procedural that isn’t about flash and glitz and methodology. It’s about people and mistakes and dead ends, about frustration and obsession and trying to uncover the truth even when the rest of the world has left the mystery behind.

“Only after the kill does man know the true ecstasy of love. It is the natural instinct. Kill, then love! When you have known that you have known ecstasy!”

* Interestingly enough, Philip Baker Hall also appears in Bulkley’s The Zodiac.

(Text in capital letters from the Zodiac’s letter published August 1, 1969, and decoded by Donald Gene Harden and his wife Bettye June. All misspellings and grammatical errors are as per the Zodiac’s message.)

(Zodiac OS courtesy of aintitcool.com.)