Zodiac (4K UHD Review)

Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
Review Date: Dec 05, 2024
Format: 4K Ultra HD

Director

David Fincher

Release Date(s)

2007 (October 29, 2024)

Studio(s)

Phoenix Pictures (Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment)

Film/Program Grade: A
Video Grade: A-
Audio Grade: A-
Extras Grade: A+

Review

After the behind-the-scenes chaos of David Fincher’s flawed but fascinating debut feature Alien³, he rebounded with a vengeance three years later by reinventing the serial killer genre with Se7en.

Alien³ had been a painful experience, with the producers and the studio interfering with him at every possible opportunity. (The Cinefantastique cover story on the film was subtitled It Came from Development Hell.) In comparison, New Line Cinema offered Fincher relative creative freedom on Se7en, and thanks to the backing of Brad Pitt, he was even able to retain the dark ending from Andrew Kevin Walker’s script. With that kind of control and his creative juices flowing, Fincher crafted what’s arguably the ultimate serial killer film. Yet it still wasn’t his ultimate statement on the subject. That’s because his interest in this kind of material was driven by a personal connection: he grew up in Marin County during the Sixties and Seventies, which mean that he lived through the grip of fear that the Zodiac killer held over the San Francisco Bay area. So, twelve years after Se7en, he returned to the genre to deliver his own thesis statement in the form of Zodiac.

Fincher announces his intentions for Zodiac before the opening credits even have a chance to roll. It was a co-production between Paramount and Warner Bros., and Fincher elected to use the vintage Seventies-era logos from each company instead of the modern ones. Zodiac is as much about evoking a time and a place as it is an exploration of the maddeningly conflicting details around the unsolved Zodiac killings. This game with the logos is the kind of obsessive-compulsive attention to detail that Fincher is noted for, and that’s appropriate in this case, because Zodiac is also a portrait of obsession. It’s an obsessive film from an obsessive-compulsive filmmaker, about an obsessive individual. Before the first of the opening credits even have a chance to appear on screen, the seemingly superficial textures of Zodiac have already offered glimpses of the many layers that lie beneath them.

Of course, the whole saga of the unsolved Zodiac killings consists of a nearly infinite number of layers that hide a bottomless pit underneath. It takes someone truly obsessive to sort through all of those layers, so Zodiac screenwriter James Vanderbilt turned to Robert Graysmith’s books Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked. Graysmith was a former political cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle who became so fixated on the killings that he began his own investigation into the matter, amassing a wealth of information that he gleaned from law enforcement officials like David Toschi as well as many other sources. In Zodiac Unmasked, Graysmith eventually pinned his hopes on Arthur Leigh Allen as his primary suspect, although the case against Allen was fraught with inconsistencies (and later DNA testing appeared to rule him out). Further complicating things is that despite Graysmith’s obsessive-compulsive attention to detail, fair questions can be raised about parts of his account.

The solution to all of that was to not offer any solutions. The one consistent thread running through both Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked is Graysmith, with the author inadvertently revealing as much about himself as he does about Arthur Leigh Allen or any of the other suspects. So, while Zodiac follows a variety of different threads in the Zodiac tapestry like Inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the common thread that holds everything together. Even as the story expands to include Inspector Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards), Sergeant Jack Mulanax (Elias Koteas), Captain Ken Narlow (Donal Logue), handwriting expert Sherwood Morrill (Philip Baker Hall), flamboyant attorney Melvin Belli (Brian Cox), and Allen himself (John Carroll Lynch), Graysmith still remains front and center regardless of whether or not he’s actually on screen. Even his second wife Melanie (Chloë Sevigny) ends up playing second fiddle to his obsession with the Zodiac killer, a fact that she’s all too painfully aware of. Given the myriad unknowable or inconclusive elements in the Zodiac saga, the one thing that Zodiac demonstrates decisively is the obsessive-compulsive nature of Robert Graysmith.

As a result, Zodiac is a film shot from a third-person perspective that sometimes feels like a first-person portrait of one obsessive individual. Vanderbilt opted to maintain that kind of eyewitness connection throughout the story by only including events that were observed by one or more survivors—which means that the first killings attribute to Zodiac, David Arthur Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, aren’t included. Instead, Zodiac opens with the attack on Darlene Ferrin (Ciara Moriarty) and Michael Mageau (Lee Norris), before moving on to Cecilia Ann Shepard (Pell James) and Bryan Calvin Hartnell (Patrick Scott Lewis), and finally to the killing of cab driver Paul Lee Stine (Charles Schneider) at the corner of Washington and Cherry. Everything else, like the terrifying car ride of Kathleen Johns (an uncredited Ione Skye), is left appropriately shrouded in mystery.

And yet Fincher opted to preserve the ambiguities of the familiar killings by having different actors playing the barely-glimpsed Zodiac in each case. Robert Graysmith was firmly convinced that Arthur Leigh Allen was the culprit, and as a portrait of one man’s obsessions, Zodiac preserves that perspective. Still, the fact that Fincher never actually used John Carroll Lynch in any of his stagings of the murders speaks volumes. He was far less concerned with knowing the unknowable than he was with capturing the grip that the Zodiac killer held over the San Franciso Bay area, as seen through the eyes of the people affected by it. That ambiguity extends to the ending, not just in terms of a title card explaining that the remaining DNA evidence didn’t point to Allen, but also by having a different actor (Jimmi Simpson) playing the older Michael Mageau in the final scene. As obsessive-compulsive as David Fincher may be about every last conceivable detail, he’s never been afraid to fudge those details in order to serve a larger purpose. Zodiac may or may not be the ultimate serial killer film, but it’s unquestionably Fincher’s ultimate statement on the nature of obsession. It takes one to know one.

Cinematographer Harris Savides captured Zodiac digitally at 1080p resolution (as uncompressed 10-bit 4:4:4 DPX files) using Thompson Viper FilmStream cameras with Zeiss DigiPrime anamorphic lenses. (A handful of slow-motion shots were shot on 35mm film in Super-35 format using Arriflex 435 ES cameras with Zeiss Super Speed spherical lenses). Post-production work was completed at 1080p, framed at 2.39:1. Given the low capture resolution and early digital sensors in the cameras, some shots suffered from noise, dead pixels, ringing, and even hum bar interference patterns, so the DI was sent to DTS Digital Cinema in Burbank for enhancement. Their process involved frame interpolation in order to upscale and sharpen the original footage. The results were re-output at 1080p and then sent back to Technicolor Digital Intermediates before being scanned out to 35mm film for theatrical release. For this version, the 1080p DI has been upscaled to 4K and graded for High Dynamic Range in both Dolby Vision and HDR10.

1080p origination or not, the fact that the footage was enhanced prior to being down-rezzed back to 1080p means that it was essentially supersampled during that process, so it’s a surprisingly good candidate for upscaling to 4K. Aliasing, jaggies, and any other artifacts like that are kept to a minimum, and the image is crisp and clear throughout. No, it’s not a significant upgrade over the Blu-ray version in terms of fine detail, and yet it does feel like there’s more clarity to the image—and the greater breathing room on the disc thanks to the UHD format certainly doesn’t hurt in that regard.

The HDR grade takes advantage of the 10-bit 4:4:4 capture in order to provide greater depth to the color resolution. It also offers more depth in the contrast range, which benefits both ends of the spectrum. The abundant night shooting benefits the most, with the darkest areas of the screen now looking more natural and less digital. For example, on Blu-ray, the opening shot of Darlene Ferrin driving to pick up Mike Mageau suffers from frozen interference patterns in the sky behind the houses, but it’s clean on UHD. The brightest highlights are improved as well—when Darlene and Mike pass by the Mr. Ed’s Burgers & Fries drive-in, the neon looks harsh and too bright on Blu-ray, but has greater depth and realism on UHD. All of these improvements are incremental, not revelatory, but they’re still real, so don’t let the 1080p origination dissuade you from auditioning this version.

Audio is offered in English 5.1 Dolby TrueHD and English 2.0 Descriptive Audio, with optional English SDH subtitles. While some people might bemoan the lack of an Atmos remix, this is one case where the original mix is probably best left alone. That’s because Fincher deliberately kept most of the sonic energy focused on the front soundstage as a way of further evoking the past. The surrounds are used sparingly until later on in the film, when the march of time has led things into the Dolby Stereo era. While an object-based remix could have drawn viewers into the environments more convincingly, that’s not what Fincher intended. It’s easy to forget sometimes that just because more channels are available, it doesn’t necessarily mean that more channels are better in all cases. Aside from the dialogue, the single most important element of the sound design in Zodiac is the music, both in terms of David Shire’s eerie score and the perfectly chosen pieces of source music, and they’re both reproduced just fine in 5.1 TrueHD.

Paramount’s 4K Ultra HD release of Zodiac is a three-disc set that includes the theatrical cut on UHD, the director’s cut on Blu-ray, and an additional Blu-ray with extras. (Note that the latter two discs are identical to the ones included in the previous Blu-ray release of the director’s cut.) It also includes a Digital Code on a paper insert and a slipcover. There are no extras on the UHD, but the following extras are included on the Blu-rays:

DISC TWO: BD (FEATURE FILM)

Audio Commentary by David Fincher
Audio Commentary by Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Brad Fischer, James Vanderbilt, and James Ellroy

DISC THREE: BD (EXTRAS)

The Film:
- Zodiac Deciphered (HD – 54:15)
- The Visual Effects of Zodiac (HD – 15:18)
- Previsualization:
  - Blue Rock Springs (SD – 1:07)
  - Lake Berryessa (SD – 4:21)
  - San Francisco (SD – 1:02)
  - Theatrical Trailer (HD – 2:33)
The Facts:
- This Is the Zodiac Speaking (HD – 102:18)
- Prime Suspect: His Name Was Arthur Leigh Allen (HD – 42:35)

The first Blu-ray offers two different commentary tracks. While the group track with Gyllenhaal, Downey, Fischer, Vanderbilt, and Ellroy is the liveliest and the most entertaining of the two, fans of Fincher will naturally gravitate toward his commentary instead. He tends to be laid-back and a bit dry, but he offers a wealth of insight into his thought processes about making the film. He notes details where he deliberately took dramatic license by diverging from the real account, and explains the decisions that he made that were based on debatable points about the real events. (He doesn’t believe that Kathleen Johns actually encountered the Zodiac killer, and he doesn’t believe that the Riverside killings were Zodiac either.) He does point out the scenes that were added to the director’s cut and explains why he cut them from the theatrical version, and yes, both versions are actually his director’s cut. It’s just that he feels that the longer version wouldn’t have worked as well for audiences sitting down in a theatre, while it plays better in a home environment. Naturally, he also provides plenty of technical information, including why he shoots so many takes—it’s so that he gets the full shot that he wants without having to cut away. Both commentaries have their strengths, but if you’re a Fincher fan and only have time for one of them, the choice is clear.

The rest of the extras are divided into two sections, with most of them produced and/or directed by David A. Prior. The first one covers the film itself, starting with Zodiac Deciphered. It’s a seven-part documentary on the making of the film, featuring interviews with Robert Graysmith, James Vanderbilt, producer Brad Fischer, costume designer Casey Storm, and set decorator Victor J. Zolfo. (David Fincher, Harris Savides, Dave Toschi, the cast, and other crew members all appear via behind-the-scenes production footage.) For a film that’s about obsession with detail, it’s a great look at the obsessions of its director, down to the last possible detail—even the newspapers in the newsroom were reprinted to include all of the pages that are never seen in the film itself.

The Visual Effects of Zodiac is a breakdown of the effects in several key sequences from the film, featuring Craig Barron from Matte World Digital and Eric Barba from Digital Domain. For all of the obvious effects shots like the overhead view of Paul Stine’s cab roaming through the streets of San Francisco, there are many more that are so seamless that most people would never recognize them—and Stine’s murder on the corner of Cherry and Washington is a prime example. The film extras are rounded out by the Theatrical Trailer and three different Previsualization breakdowns, comparing the raw previz reels to the sequences in the final film.

The second section of the extras is devoted to the true story of the Zodiac killings. This is the Zodiac Speaking is a four-part documentary on each of the four main attacks that are attributed to the Zodiac killer: Lake Herman Road (David Arthur Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen); Blue Rock Springs (Darlene Ferrin and Michel Mageau); Lake Berryessa (Cecilia Ann Shepard and Bryan Calvin Hartnell); and San Francisco (Paul Lee Stine). It features interviews with many of the surviving police officers who were involved with the original cases, as well as actual Zodiac survivors Michael Mageau and Bryan Hartnell. (There’s also some archival footage.) It’s an invaluable document of the memories of those who were there. Finally, Prime Suspect: His Name Was Arthur Leigh Allen is a portrait of the suspected killer, featuring interviews with former friends and associates of Allen, plus Robert Graysmith and various law enforcement officials who were involved with the case. While it offers plenty of evidence against him, it also acknowledges the conflicting evidence like the DNA testing, so it retains the central ambiguity of the whole Zodiac affair. (Some of the interviewees also feel that he was falsely accused.)

There aren’t any new extras offered here, but there’s no need for any. The original director’s cut Blu-ray set was already an outstanding example of the kinds of special editions that major studios just don’t produce anymore—and considering that it’s filled with real documentaries, not just static interviews, it also trumps much of what even the best boutique labels can offer. The only real issue that some people will have with this set is the fact that the director’s cut isn’t offered in 4K, and that’s understandable. The reasons why aren’t clear—sometimes, these home video director’s cuts were produced at lower resolutions (1080p or even 480p in some cases), but considering that all of Zodiac was produced at 1080p, that can’t be the issue here.

Still, while I also prefer the director’s cut, the differences aren’t substantial enough to make this a deal breaker for me. Many of the dialogue extensions are take-it-or-leave-it, and the major additional scene is interesting but not necessary for the story. The biggest loss is the black screen time transition, which is a brilliant moment even if Fincher himself felt it wouldn’t have worked in the theatrical cut. In revisiting both versions, I discovered that I didn’t feel strongly enough about it to assign a different rating to each version—which is why there’s only a single rating at the top of this review. Yes, the director’s cut is slightly better, but not enough so to change my score. Your own mileage may vary, but if you’re willing to rewatch the theatrical cut with an open mind, Paramount’s new 4K set is worth the upgrade—and if Zodiac isn’t already in your collection, this is unquestionably the version to own.

- Stephen Bjork

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