It’s a film that’s as much about not making a movie as it is about the subject itself, and that means it carries the limitations of its own conceit.

| Original Score: C | Mar 19, 2025

Any students and/or devotees of the true-crime spree rampant in our modern storytelling will find Zodiac Killer Project a must-see.

| Mar 9, 2025

It’s a true crime documentary for people who hate true crime, and for people who love it, and for people who hate that they love it. Whatever your position, Shackleton is right there with you.

| Mar 8, 2025

 …a deconstruction of true crime… [that] comes around to arriving at some of the same kind of epiphanies that that material, in its best form, often arrives at.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 3, 2025

Part video essay, part investigative journalism, the heavy-meta doc peels back the curtain on the tricks of the trade and the reliably predictable tropes that have completely overtaken true-crime documentaries writ large.

| Original Score: 73% | Mar 1, 2025

A slick piece of media criticism that uses humor to dissect how the true crime genre has lost the plot ethically (or maybe never had it to begin with) as it has become a cottage industry with its own formula for easy consumer consumption.

| Feb 28, 2025

It’s a full-frontal assault on a way-too-popular genre, done with a trickster’s deft touch.

| Feb 28, 2025

Shackleton's narration is wry and astute but also wistful; he's self-aware enough to know he's drawn to this stuff just like so many of us, even as he understands its limitations and drawbacks.

| Feb 28, 2025

The non-film that Shackleton has rescued from the jaws of erasure is almost certainly more rewarding than the one he was originally hoping to make.

| Original Score: B | Feb 28, 2025

Feels like you’re watching a documentary pitch meeting rather than an actual film. While it had the potential to spark interesting thoughts and ideas about the true crime genre, everything is buried under a mountain of dry, unrelenting narration.

| Feb 13, 2025

[W]hat it lacks in production value in makes up for with some trenchant commentary on the tropes that True Crime shows/films use, and how much of what we see on screen is manufactured to manipulate us.

| Feb 12, 2025

...a surprisingly compelling story on its own, but also one that serves as a clever deconstruction of true crime, and a very open look at the editorial decisions that shape the genre.

| Feb 10, 2025

Zodiac Killer Project, for example, wittily deconstructs the true-crime genre through Charlie Shackleton’s aborted attempt to make such a documentary...

| Feb 8, 2025

All in all Zodiac Killer Project is very clever. It gets at all sorts of intriguing questions in terms of creativity, media consumption, doc filmmaking, obsession and more. While no clear answers are given, the film is fun.

| Feb 8, 2025

A wryly funny deconstruction that doubles as the finest work of criticism I’ve encountered in some time.

| Feb 6, 2025

Without being obvious, the film gives us a chance to reflect on why we like true crime...why do they call our attention, what are they telling us about ourselves, what are they saying about the world in which we live in...[Full review in Spanish]

| Feb 3, 2025

The brilliance here is how Shackleton mirrors his own film-that-never-was with a wide series of actual successes, particularly those shot over the last decade where the streaming giants (and their subscribed audiences) have gorged on these titles.

| Feb 3, 2025

While I appreciate what Zodiac Killer Project is doing and how it’s doing it, the film can be frustratingly vague, incomplete in several of its points, and monotonous in its overall expression.

| Jan 31, 2025

The film shifts into being a work of criticism in its own right by becoming something of a video essay where we see just how much of the sludge of shallow true crime content falls back on the same old tricks.

| Jan 31, 2025

Charlie Shackleton gets at the heart of what makes these docs so successful on both a psychological and schematic level. He deconstructs the genre but also manages to deepen it.

| Jan 31, 2025