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Zodiac

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 40 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 142 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Crime | Drama | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
James Vanderbilt
Robert Graysmith (book)
Directed by: David Fincher
Release Date:
Theatrical: March 2, 2007
DVD: July 24, 2007
Running Time: 156 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for some strong killings, language, drug material and brief sexual images
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Robert Downey Jr., Brian Cox, John Carroll Lynch, Chloë Sevigny, and Ed Setrakian
Based on the actual case files of one of the most intriguing unsolved crimes in the nation's history, Zodiac is a thriller from David Fincher, director of "Seven" and "Fight Club." As a serial killer terrifies the San Francisco Bay Area and taunts police with his ciphers and letters, investigators in four jurisdictions search for the murderer. The case will become an obsession for four men as their lives and careers are built and destroyed by the endless trail of clues. (Paramount Pictures)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Fight Club Panic Room Seven (se7en) The Game
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Village Voice Nathan Lee
Zodiac exhausts more than one genre. Termite art par excellence, it burrows for the sake of burrowing, as fascinated by its own nooks and crannies as "Inland Empire."
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Zodiac never veers from its stoically gripping, police-blotter tone, yet it begins to take on the quality of a dream.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Zodiac is the rare serial-killer movie in which the psychosis stems as much from the pursuers (and the filmmaker) as the pursued.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Fincher gets it all right, and Donovan's hippie-dippy "Hurdy Gurdy Man," which bookends the story, has never sounded so hauntingly menacing.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Its most impressive accomplishment is to gather a bewildering labyrinth of facts and suspicions over a period of years, and make the journey through this maze frightening and suspenseful.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
In Zodiac, working from a script by James Vanderbilt, Fincher has decidedly toned down his act. His straight-ahead, methodical direction isn't as flagrantly unsettling as much of his previous work, but it's more psychologically layered. In this film, for the first time, we feel for his characters when they bleed.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
An absorbing and fulfilling experience -- even though it ends with a question mark.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Rarely has a film with so much blood on its hands seemed so insistently alive.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
Firing on all cylinders as a creepy thriller, police procedural and "All the President's Men"-style investigative newsroom drama, the smart, extremely vivid production oozes period authenticity.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Conveying an astonishing array of information across a long narrative arc while still maintaining dramatic rhythm and tension, this adaptation of Robert Graysmith's bestseller reps by far director David Fincher's most mature and accomplished work.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
Zodiac may be the perfect meeting of filmmaker and subject -- an obsessive's portrait of obsession that is, finally, a monument to irresolution.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
Fincher, whose work on "Fight Club" and "Panic Room" displayed his expertise in melding the suspenseful and the lurid, plays it cool here. He lets his stars do their thing.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Anyone who enjoys the novels of Ed McBain, the Oscar-winning "All the President's Men" or any televised variation of "CSI" will be at home here.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
It's fascinating and unexpected both in its simple, looming images and its storytelling priorities, which may not intersect with the priorities of audiences who couldn't get enough of "Se7en."
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Zodiac is a reproach both to those dedicated to unscrambling "The Da Vinci Code" and to those hooked on forensic crime shows where all the evidence leads to a tidy conclusion. That Zodiac's manhunt is inconclusive makes it all the more haunting.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
It makes for a daringly different kind of thriller -- cerebral, meticulous, haunting.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
This is the rare movie that blends long scenes of meticulous research with a sweeping story and sustains a feeling of riveting suspense. Zodiac grips you by the throat and doesn't let go.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
This movie sends you into the night thinking, maybe even a little afraid. Bravo, Mr. Fincher.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Like Brian De Palma's 1981 masterpiece "Blow-Out," this movie contains cutting perceptions of obsession, institutional and professional myopia, misplaced loyalty in experts, misreadings of evidence and the kind of confusion that leads to conspiracy theories. But Fincher's movie falls short of masterpiece status.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
It doesn't break ground like "Seven" or "Fight Club"; it's not a thrill ride like "Panic Room." But it's a mature, thoughtful and full-bodied movie that compensates for the demands it makes with the rewards of craftsmanship, rigor, skill and art.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
To undertake a thriller of this length and scope with no prospect of a morally satisfying resolution, Fincher must have been a little nuts himself. We'll see whether audiences used to the tidy one-hour cases on "CSI" and "Law & Order" will follow him down Zodiac's murky, twisted, and ultimately dead-end street. It may not sound like it from that description, but it's a hell of a ride.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
The more unpleasant aspects of the case are minimized in favor of telling the story and highlighting the effects of the case on these four men. It drags in spots, but even if Fincher hasn't hit it out of the park, Zodiac is easily a stand-up triple.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
Zodiac is superbly made, but it's also a strange piece of work.
Read Full Review >Empire Kim Newman
This gripping character study becomes more agonisingly suspenseful as it gets closer to an answer that can't be confirmed.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Zodiac is a kind of corrective remake of "Se7en," a renunciation of that earlier movie's psychotic nihilism. That rejection extends to a neat sight gag. Fincher gives us a shot of a cardboard cutout for "Dirty Harry" that mocks the personal abyss that catching Zodiac becomes.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
The most provocative aspect of this compulsive riddle is how it resists closure. The end comes not when we have the answer, but when the movie reaches its irresolute end.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
The straightforward approach is crucial, because the movie is constantly doling out so much information -- so many names and places and theories to keep track of -- that it borders on the overwhelming. Occasionally, it's a little dull, too.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
The length and uneven pacing are stumbling blocks with which an audience must contend. Patient viewers will be rewarded; others may wish for something with less subtlety and more verve.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
What begins like your basic police procedural becomes more and more choppy and diffuse. To a point, that’s intentional: Zodiac was never caught, and Fincher aims to creep you out with the lack of closure.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust
Zodiac is primarily a complex character study, despite the film's grim and gruesome subject matter. It's a role reversal of sorts for a director who normally emphasizes the brutal tension in his movies.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
The picture tries hard for addictive mystery, but it is full of scenes that promise insight and don't deliver.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
At 2 1/2 hours, the film is too long in the telling and too short on suspense.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Without a persuasive ending, Zodiac is an exercise in frustration if not futility. But before it hits the inevitable wall, it does something better than most genre films even attempt: it perfectly depicts the obsession that often overtakes cops and reporters involved in high-profile crimes.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
That's exactly the problem with this movie: It's not about a killer, or his victims, or the manhunt or the cops. They're all in it, of course, more or less. But it's about a writer.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
In some ways, for better and for worse, this is even more about Graysmith (Jake Gyllehaal)--who became obsessed with solving the Zodiac killings that terrorized northern California in the late 60s--than about the murderer.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Bits of the picture are fascinating to look at, but eventually, exhaustion kicks in, to the point where we're not sure what we're looking at, or why.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Never takes off, but it never collapses. At times, it becomes frustrating -- for example, about 30 minutes are spent pursuing a lead that goes nowhere.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The film feels self-obsessed, an intriguing drama that slowly devolves into a bleak meditation on the absence of dramatics.
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.7 (out of 10) based on 142 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Filipe M. gave it a10:
Right after I've seen the movie, I felt compelled to come here and leave the maximum rating. Ok, it's a looooooong movie, but thanks to Fincher's direction never gets boring and when you think that it's almost in the end, you get a new thrill. Besides that, there's the great character performed by Downey Jr. that chew the scenery by outstanding acting in his scenes. Seriously, if you're still reading this, don't waste any more time and GO WATCH THIS MOVIE!
Gavin C. gave it an8:
'Zodiac' displays both gripping suspense and comedy while introducing a mix between 'scary film' and 'murder mystery film'.
Henri M. gave it a10:
The most chilling film I've seen in recent years. Not only does Fincher meticulously recreates the atmosphere and mood of the 70's, he gives a brilliant insight on obsession, and examines how the murder case took over people's lives. It's also technically superb, with great performances all around.
Chess L gave it a9:
This was a great movie in my perspective, all those that think this movie was a total shrek, well you can all suck it.
Lee M. gave it a10:
The best thriller of the last 10 years by some distance.
David gave it a10:
Brilliant. Just because it isn't a typical slam-blam chaotic action-filled, gory serial killer movie, doesn't mean it won't send chills up your spine at times. Zodiac is at once a newspaper movie, a serial killer film, and a meditation on the often excruciatingly frustrating results from hours and hours of police work. See it now.
Jay M. gave it a10:
This strange, obsessive film by David Fincher is the perfect match of material and directorial personality. Given to compulsive retakes and meticulous preparation and long shoots, Mr. Fincher finds his alter ego in his characters compulsions yielding a masterwork nearly unmatched in recent cinema. One of the 3 or 4 best films of 2007.
