Kritiken

More than any American movie of the past decade, Zodiac accepts and embraces irresolvability, which may be why it's so hypnotically rewatchable. If it's a cosmic drama, it's one that works on macro and micro levels. Its depiction of the hunt for the most notorious and mysterious serial killer of the 20th century is at once suggestive of larger cultural shifts while also being detailed down to the inch.

It's richly addictive, all thanks to its crack squads before and behind the camera, sharing an attention to detail that's fitfully obsessive. That the film itself has gained a cult following of viewers looking to unravel every trick loaded into its nearly three-hour length is even tastier.

Deep in the film, as Robert seems to have lost everything, he finds himself investigating on a rainy night as he visits Bob Vaughn, who worked as an organist at same movie theatre as one of the Zodiac suspects. The scene might be one of the best works of horror in contemporary cinema, a succinct meeting of suspicion and paranoia that challenges an audience's need for closure.

With its dead-end investigations and painstaking recreation of Northern California through the late 1960s and '70s, Zodiac (2007) enacts a complex remediation of the cinematic forms of the New Hollywood period.