Zodiac

Zodiac was David Fincher's return to the serial killer film more than ten years after his stellar breakout debut with Seven. Although I do love Seven wholeheartedly there was a slight immaturity in that film in regards to its presentation of part of its thesis that cities are the pit of despair. Zodiac is a very different film, and Fincher's most mature film as a director. There are scares in Zodiac, but there intention is not for the cheap jump scare. They instead seek to truly get under your skin with the idea of the unknown, in that any stranger could be murderer. The film has one of the scariest scenes in all of cinema and it involves no bloodshed just a dark, dank basement, a creeping house and a the brilliant casting of the man who played Roger Rabbit. The terrifying scenes of the film are terrifying in their reality as you could feel yourself in the situation with such ease. These moments are not all there is to the film though, and it is truly a procedural, the greatest procedural ever made. That element is fascinating through the vivid personalities we meet as well as it creates that obsession in the viewer to the find the truth the obsession that claws away at our main investigators. Around that though is the sense of dread of that unknown, that every day one does not find the killer, the killer is still free to do as he pleases. What is perhaps most fascinating is how emotional this film is as it never becomes as distant examination despite never forcing its hand in this regard. It though creates the weight of years of not knowing as well as the years of suffering inflicted by a single disturbing man. It's Fincher's masterpiece.
5/5