Zodiac Killer Project is about Lyndon E. Lafferty’s 1970s search for the Zodiac Killer. Yet it’s also far more than that: a deconstruction of both Lafferty’s quest and the cinematic form director Charlie Shackleton would have used to tell it had he secured the rights to the former California Highway Patrolman’s book The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge.

Shackleton’s documentary, which hits theaters Nov. 21, is a playful mixture of film criticism and true-crime storytelling that takes the genre apart, piece by piece, to reveal its now-codified clockwork structure. However, in pinpointing the various conventions employed by such affairs, it underscores their effectiveness. Consequently, it’s a work that simultaneously breaks down and builds up, critiques and celebrates, all as it

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