zodiac true story scary story

"Zodiac"-- True Story, Scary Story and a Pointer to Evil

The new movie Zodiac had me loosing sleep the other night. There are

scenes in the movie that are very real and haunting-- for days and

nights after you see them. I was awake staring at my bedroom door for

at least a half an hour at about 3 am, and looking behind me as I

walked around for days after. It is not a normal thriller movie--I do

not like horrors-- it is based on the true story of a serial killer

who terrorized the San Francisco area for decades, beginning in the

mid-Seventies.

There are a couple problems about the film and I will mention them to

start. The first problem with the film is its notorious ending: the

real-life killer was never captured. Thus one leaves wanting

resolution--but of course this points to the reality. The critics are

right as well: it is too long. It is almost three hours and really

doesn't need to be.

Those things being said the film is amazing. Brilliantly acting,

written and directed-- it is a good old fashion thriller/detective

drama. It is the best film I have seen this year. It is so real and

haunting-- and accomplishes what it sets out to: to tell the story of

Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle who

kept pursuing the Zodiac killer even though the police gave up on it.

He commits himself to the task at the cost of everything he holds

dear.

The movie subtly highlights what one feels while watching it: that

real criminal cases move slowly, are tedious, and do not often end

"happily", contrasted with such stories as told on film, and within

the media. In Zodiac, a screening of 1971's Dirty Harry provides

rueful commentary on the action. While this "real-life" movie about

Zodiac submits that only a furious, out-of-bounds cop can catch a

psychokiller, Zodiac shows that the cops are repeatedly hampered by

rules, demands for warrants or for multi-jurisdictional sanctions.

One leaves the movie wondering: what is wrong with people? Really,

that sounds like a kind of cliche question but what is wrong? The

depth of human depravity and evil is profound. One of the basic

questions of being human is to feel this sense and ask what is wrong

with the world? Something feels wrong. We live in a broken world, with

people who have been effected by sin and evil in many different ways

and on different scales. I wonder if many people have thought of

comitting such attrocities at some point and asked: Could I get away

with it? Maybe not all of us, but maybe on a smaller scale-- something

else that we would never dream about sharing, something in the

darkness of our soul that we have thought up that speaks to our own

evil-- a darkness that we are so uncomfortable with that we shutter at

the thought of thinking it again. Why have we thought those things

before? Because there is a disconnect between us and the Holy One who

made us-- and we know what it means to feel right but that has been

disconnected. This disconnect causes us to think and act wrongly

against ourselves, God and our neighbor. We are, if left to ourselves,

truly "fallen."

But the gospel is the great answer to that despair-- that through the

death and resurrection of Jesus that "discarded image", as CS Lewis

called it, can be restored, by a response of trust and faith in that

redemptive work, and moves us forward to a restoration that will fully

be seen and experienced in God's new creation (Revelation 21-22),

where every wrong will be righted, even the wrongs done to the poor

victims of the Zodiac. May God grant them mercy-- for we must not

forget they are not characters in a movie, but people, victims, who