dozen years after Seven, director David Fincher concentrates on yet another serial killer, only this time it's a true story. Based on Robert Graysmith’s two books, Zodiac is an absurdly entertaining, two-and-a-half-hour police procedural story that brilliantly shadows the pursuit of the notorious killer who terrorized California from the late 1960s into the mid-1970s.

With Fincher at the helm, the creepy drama follows the murderer who stalked and killed innocents for over a decade. We watch as Zodiac relishes in making people squirm: he writes taunting letters to newspapers, tempts celeb attorneys into taking his case and makes threats against school buses full of children. In his letters, he threatens attacks against schoolchildren if his words and encrypted ciphers aren’t printed in the pages of the Chronicle. He rejoices that his victims will be his slaves in paradise.

Like the book it's based on, the film bounces between the Zodiac killings (vicious attacks on lovebirds parked at remote locations near Vallejo) and the ongoing police investigations where the murders took place. The bulk of the remainder is a complex character study of the police officers and journalists obsessed with tracking down the killer: homicide detectives William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) and David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) - a cop so cool Steve McQueen reportedly used him as a model in "Bullitt;" in contrast to the cops is cocky crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) and the Chronicle's editorial cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal).

These men are hopelessly hooked on the buzz, and we watch how they are affected. At first, Gyllenhaal's stiff body language suggests a bashful persona, but he becomes progressively hyper as his fascination with the Zodiac grows. On the other hand, Downey's Avery starts out as a fearless type, but he steadily succumbs to paranoia, which he tries to drown with alcohol and drugs.