Zodiac

Rating: 10/10 (18 April 2017)

The still-unidentified Zodiac — a serial murderer who made Northern California his own private ant farm throughout 1968-69 — had but five confirmed kills. David Fincher's "Zodiac" drilled into dark pathology's of each man's process — anxiety, compulsion, uncertainty, miscommunication, territorialism — and directed Jake Gyllenhaal (Graysmith), Robert Downey Jr. (Avery) and Mark Ruffalo (Toschi) to stupendous specificities. "Zodiac" is not without wry humor or unexpected character details. But the onus of obsession is Fincher's foremost goal — desperation for definitive answers that obscures danger. "Zodiac" rides in a paranoia rumbleseat all along, but floors it over potholes during a spine-tingling climactic basement scene — evocative of how discovery and understanding come to supersede sanity, safety, justice or reason. So insistent, and successful, is Fincher at duplicating that hypervigilance that, by film's end, you may try writing a "k" in two, not three, strokes to see the difference — damning and admiring how Fincher's indisputable masterpiece has dragged you down that rabbit hole.