While the identity of the Zodiac Killer remains unknown, several popular theories connect him to men who since have passed away. But when has that ever stopped Hollywood from exploiting an exploitable concept? No stranger to other wacky “what if”s on the silver screen, San Francisco’s notorious serial killer of the late 1960s and early ’70s comes alive — with pleasure! — in Awakening the Zodiac.
Tired of living in a shitbox (their words) in a trailer park, blue-collar couple Mick and Zoe Branson (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’s Shane West and Hell Baby’s Leslie Bibb) play a lottery of different sorts by bidding on the contents of storage lockers in arrears, in hopes that whatever contents are inside will exceed their investment. On their latest, they go halfsies with Mick’s buddy, Harvey (Matt Craven, Happy Birthday to Me), who owns a pawn shop. While excavating the wares, Harvey finds a box of 8mm films: homemade snuff reels, shot by none other than the Zodiac Killer. They know this because, helpfully, the madman appears in an all-black costume befitting of a superhero, complete with chest insignia.
Because the FBI’s case against the Zodiac remains unsolved, a beaucoup reward remains up for grabs. Hurting for money, our trio reasons if only they can discern the name of the locker renter, they can cash in and be able to crawl out of their miserable small-town lives. Instead of letting the law do that detective work, they stupidly attempt it themselves, starting with a couple of good ol’ B-and-Es. Who’d’ve thunk it, but in doing so, these rubes attract the ire of the actual Zodiac (Stephen McHattie, Watchmen), who emerges from retirement and hasn’t lost his thirst for bloodshed in the ensuing decades.
It goes without saying that Awakening the Zodiac packs nary a fraction of the punch of David Fincher’s 2007 true-crime masterpiece, Zodiac, and you’d be a fool to expect it to. Although inspiration is drawn from the real-life crimes, most explicitly in the time-warped prologue, historical accuracy is not on the mind of director/co-screenwriter Jonathan Wright (Nostrum), who’s more concerned with leveraging the boogeyman’s brand-name infamy into a marketable hook and letting it lie there. Marginally functional yet utterly predictable, the movie squanders its limited creepiness and becomes a victim of its own stupidity; it even takes the time — and wastes ours — to have Harvey explain the concept of ciphers to Mick and Zoe — the stuff of workbook pages geared toward third-graders. Bibb and Craven exude more energy than the film deserves, while West just does that thing he always does, which is to say he stands around with his face scrunched into what looks like a balled-up fist. —Rod Lott