15 Movies That Say More About Their Makers Than They Realise

6. Zodiac - David Fincher

Initially regarded as a disappointment upon its release, Zodiac has grown in the estimation of fans and critics alike in the years hence, and many now see it as one of David Fincher's smartest and most precise achievements. The story follows the various investigations into the Zodiac Killer murders in and around San Francisco in the late 1960s and early 1970s by both police detectives assigned to the case and newspaper reporters who eventually come to the same inconclusive conclusion: the murderer can't be found, and the search for him costs each of the protagonists something significant, be it their relationships, careers, ambition, even their judgement. Zodiac is less a film about a serial killer than it is the modern obsession with serial killers and the human desire to get to the bottom of things, and director David Fincher is no different to the characters in that regard - he's just a little more aware of it. A notorious perfectionist and rigorous researcher, Fincher and his crew did their own 18-month investigation into the Zodiac killings before shooting the film, and the period details and myriad plot threads show the fruits of their labour. Possibly the closest character to Fincher himself is Jake Gyllenhaal's newspaper cartoonist Robert Graysmith, who falls much further down the rabbit hole than anyone else, to the detriment of his health, livelihood and safety. The director can surely relate to such a level of dedication to a single cause, though Fincher probably has a clearer head when it comes to walking into the houses of potential mass murderers...