Watch enough true-crime documentaries and patterns begin to emerge—a situation that speaks to the genre’s embrace of a cookie-cutter formula defined by a host of recurring narrative and formal tropes.

All Charlie Shackleton had to do was give the Sundance Film Festival a 90-second video introducing himself and his documentary Zodiac Killer Project, which premiered at the festival on Monday. Instead,

Director Charlie Shackleton's meta project about the notorious serial killer challenges, with wry humor, our entire approach to true crime.

"Zodiac Killer Project," the fascinating feature documentary from director Charlie Shackleton, is nothing like what it sounds. For one thing, it's not really about the infamous Zodiac Killer -- though neither really was the David Fincher film either.

It’s worth mourning the films we’ll never get to see: the unfunded epics, the unmarketable art films, perhaps even the unengaging streaming product. Filmmaker Charles Shackleton faced that grief when his thoroughly researched project,

The Zodiac Killer Project by Charlie Shackleton masterfully exposes the tricks and tropes of true crime. It just debuted at Sundance.

Starting off with a Netflix film, The Tinder Swindler covers the horrors a group of women endured after using the world’s most popular dating app, Tinder. The true story sees a seemingly charming and super-rich man make women fall in love with him. However, this is all a mask for him to con them out of enormous sums of money.

Charlie Shackleton’s quasi-true crime documentary 'Zodiac Killer Project' is a fascinating approach to form but a tepid experience overall.