Awakening the Zodiac

Despite both lead characters being completely unlikable, Awakening the Zodiac is actually better than I was expecting. Certainly less horror, more investigative thriller, is a serviceable theoretical followup to the real-life Zodiac killings. Could probably have used a little more excitement or a lot more logical action though.

Final rating:★★ - Had some things that appeal to me, but a poor finished product.

If you watch Awakening the Zodiac in the hope that it will be half as good as David Fincher's Zodiac (2007), you will be disappointed. Some have called Awakening the Zodiac a thriller. It is not. I don't say that because it lacks thrills (which it does), but because it is a very bland horror film.

The idea of a couple tracking the Zodiac killer together is pretty good. But, then the first scene begins and the good ideas end. The script is silly, the pace tedious, the leads miscast, the acting a drag. Everything is just wrong. See, Mick and Zoe are a poor white couple who are barely scraping by. (They look like models, so you have to pretend.) Zoe's peeved because Mick has gambled three months' rent on magic beans—oops, I mean the contents of a storage unit. For their money, they get $400 worth of furniture, plus a bunch of films that the Zodiac killer made to document his murders, his cipher key, his social security number, and his recipe for cherries jubilee. They learn of a $100,000 reward for information leading to the killer's capture. The entire film is premised on their pursuit of this reward, even though they already have such information in the form of the Zodiac's films, the storage unit, and the possibility of the killer's return.

Mick and Zoe are sent on, and aided in, this nonsensical quest by a Doc Brown knockoff who owns a pawnshop. The shop, like every other trope in the film, is straight out of the VHS era. Zodiac himself is basically Jason Vorhees with less screen time. (Actually, if you can find anything original in this film, I'm offering a $100,000 reward.)

Zodiac was powerful for its depiction of the obsessiveness and desperation of journalist Paul Avery's years-long search for the killer's identity. His obsession ruins his marriage and takes over his life. Awakening the Zodiac has no such drama. Instead, Mick and Zoe fall ass-backwards into evidence that Avery would have killed for. (If you'll pardon the expression.) To t...