AWAKENING THE ZODIAC (2017)

Studio:       Vertical Entertainment
Director:    Jonathan Wright
Writer:       Jennifer Archer, Michael Horrigan, Jonathan Wright
Producer:  Jeff Sackman, Michael Baker
Stars:     Shane West, Leslie Bibb, Matt Craven, Kenneth Welsh, Nicholas Campbell, Stephen McHattie

Review Score:

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Summary:

A trailer park couple is targeted by a madman after they uncover a collection of film reels belonging to The Zodiac Killer.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

1968 – Hunter’s Point, California – After the teens have a brief encounter with a police officer, The Zodiac Killer murders David Arthur Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen on Lake Herman Road.

Present Day – Virginia – Taking a risk to change his poor financial situation, landscaper Mick Bradley purchases an abandoned storage locker with his pawnbroker friend Harvey. Among the items retrieved from the unit are home movie reels of the Zodiac murders filmed by Zodiac himself. Despite her initial hesitancy, Mick’s wife Zoe agrees to help Mick and Harvey investigate the reels in hopes of obtaining a $100,000 reward for information leading to Zodiac’s capture.

Meanwhile, Zodiac captures Tina, the woman who manages the storage unit facility, and slits her throat with a knife.

Mick and Zoe break into the storage facility office to find out who rented the Zodiac locker. They discover it was rented under the name Betty Ferguson. After obtaining Betty Ferguson’s address, the couple has a brief showdown with a man in the shadows outside.

Mick’s trailer park neighbor Ray warns him about pursuing Zodiac.

Mick, Zoe, and Harvey break into the house belonging to Betty Ferguson and her husband Balthazar. While trying to steal another film reel, the trio is confronted at gunpoint by Benjamin Ferguson. Benjamin reveals he is Betty and Balthazar’s son. His parents, both in their nineties, actually live in Florida. Benjamin gives Harvey a business card identifying him as an editor at the Tri-County News Ledger. As Benjamin dismisses the trespassers, a nearby neighbor briefly asks if everything is okay.

Harvey spots a cipher key while reviewing one of the film reels. While Harvey uses the key to work on decoding the unsolved Zodiac cipher, Zoe goes to the town hall to research records on Benjamin Ferguson.

Zoe discovers Benjamin’s background is consistent with Zodiac’s and Benjamin can be placed in San Francisco in the 1960s, where he worked at a newspaper following the Vietnam War. However, Benjamin had already moved to Virginia, as he had been writing investigative articles while pursuing a theory that Zodiac was moving east, at the time Zodiac murdered cabbie Paul Stine.

Despite contradictory evidence, Mick continues under the pretense that Benjamin is Zodiac. Zoe becomes concerned with her husband’s erratic behavior when strange events begin making Mick paranoid.

Mick and Zoe check in with Harvey, who dismisses them so that he can continue solving the cipher, which will reportedly reveal the Zodiac’s name. When the couple returns later, they find Harvey missing, and initially assume he abandoned them to claim the reward money alone.

Mick investigates the space above the pawnshop when he notices something dripping from the ceiling. Zoe sees Harvey’s van peeling away outside and, assuming Harvey is trying to get away from them in a hurry, immediately gives chase in Mick’s truck. At the same time, Mick discovers Harvey’s murdered body upstairs and realizes his wife is in danger.

Mick frantically races to the Ferguson house, where he finds Benjamin dead in his car with his throat cut. Mick also finds a Zodiac cipher written on the car door.

Zoe tracks Harvey’s van to a remote farm. When her guard goes down, Zodiac captures her. Zodiac then calls Mick from Zoe’s phone with a taunt and a threat to not contact police.

With Zoe held captive, Zodiac explains that he hadn’t killed anyone for 40 years. He had followed Ben from San Francisco because he knew Ben was close to uncovering his identity, but grew to enjoy life in Virginia as Ben’s unassuming neighbor. Forgetting to make payments on his storage locker compelled Zodiac to resurrect his crime spree to protect his identity.

Mick arrives at the farm for a faceoff with Zodiac. Over the course of their confrontation and gunplay, Mick manages to free Zoe. The faceoff continues all over the farm until Zoe brings Zodiac to the ground and Mick then shoots him in the throat.

Four weeks later, the FBI and local authorities continue investigating the recent murders. Mick exits the trailer to fix a light and seemingly vanishes. Worried, Zoe goes outside to check on him. An ominous foot sets down in the foreground.

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Review:

Mick’s landscaping business and his wife Zoe’s occasional hairdressing gig are far from making meager ends meet.  Mick has a plan for escaping their trailer park trappings though.  Acting on an impulse only slightly less foolhardy than sinking cash they don’t have into lotto tickets, Mick takes three months rent and throws in with his pawnbroker pal Harvey to purchase a presumably abandoned storage locker.

If she wasn’t so miffed at the silly spend of money, Zoe would be louder with her “I told you so” laugh when the men end up with $400 worth of junk and a few rusty old film tins.  Except inside those tins are home movie reels that appear to show the infamous Zodiac Killer committing his notorious crimes.

Zoe isn’t anxious to descend into a true crime rabbit hole that could lead to a serial murderer.  But the lure of a six-figure reward for outing Zodiac’s true identity is too enticing to resist.  So Mick, Zoe, and Harvey begin connecting the clues, only for the line to boomerang back at them when they discover Zodiac might still be alive, and they might be his next targets.

An ordinary couple caught in the crossfire of a decades-long cold case through unexpected circumstances is almost Hitchcockian.  Having costars Shane West and Leslie Bibb, predominantly Bibb, put down-to-earth charm into down-on-their-luck folks then opens the right door for drawing up drama a viewer can become invested in.

Bibb and West have a nice push-pull to their banter that bounces between frustration and affection in equal amounts.  There’s a fresh feeling to their relationship, like they are an authentic couple, not make-believe people existing solely to set up a story.  Matt Craven, an often undervalued actor, puts the same stab of personality into pawnbroker Harvey.

This trio of talent is truly trying to make living, breathing characters out of their performances.  They’re successful too.  When you step back momentarily to mentally hear how milquetoast many of their lines are, you can better appreciate how they collectively shape material to read as real interactions, even when the script’s top task for them is to deliver exposition.

Thanks to the actors injecting intrigue, “Awakening the Zodiac” keeps its serial killer thriller hook sharp for a fair stretch of time.  The mystery of where their investigation might go and who The Zodiac Killer could be has some pull when it first leaves the station, although it is definitely of the tamely dry variety and not so much sensationally juicy.

As the train rolls forward, a hurdle for the film is it only has enough gas for TV movie-sized scope.  For one thing, it’s impossible to not pinpoint who the killer is based on the fact that only six actors are top-billed in the opening credits.  Three of them can be completely ruled out as suspects from the first moment you meet them.  Two more are introduced early as such obvious red herrings that they are quickly crossed off, too.  Pay no attention to the person you’re still waiting on to make an appearance and maybe the blindfold can remain in place a moment longer.

Despite fine cinematography and a crisp enough look, the greater issue unraveling “Awakening the Zodiac” is a derivative back half that doesn’t hold up when the story is all said and done.  I can hop over the improbable idea that “the deadliest serial killer in U.S. history,” a debatable distinction considering Zodiac has only five confirmed kills, remained unidentified by local, federal, and armchair investigators for nearly 50 years.  Yet his undoing comes from missing two weeks of payments on a storage locker, which exposes key evidence he implausibly couldn’t keep somewhere more secure.

Harder disbelief to suspend involves a long last act sequence of predictable pacing and conspicuous plot beats.  These moments range from Mick exhaling, “Zoe, pick up!” through gritted teeth toward an unanswered phone to a Bond villain confession filling in all remaining blanks.  “Awakening the Zodiac” also adds unnecessary epilogue minutes with a stinger that makes zero sense considering how the movie concludes.

“Awakening the Zodiac” has a worthwhile premise.  The movie is made more compelling by a cast doing an honest day’s work when few would have noticed had they just phoned it in.  But without any real surprises in store, the final phases of the middling mystery don’t have enough oomph to tie the movie together.

Review Score:  60

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