Cinephile.

As meticulously put together as its titular killer's cryptograms, David Pincher's Zodiac is like a fascinating Wikipedia entry come to life. This is one detail-crammed procedural (and at just under three hours, there is a lot of room for details), but the end result fascinates in a way worthy of its subject matter--a case that has consumed detectives, citizens, and true-crime aficionados for decades.

The film focuses on three such obsessed people: shy political cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), his San Francisco Chronicle colleague Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), who works the crime beat, and homicide inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo). As the Zodiac killings begin to play out around them in 1969 San Francisco, Toschi is tasked with solving the crimes, while Graysmith and Avery decide to investigate on their own--aided by the fact that the media-savvy Zodiac is sending his letters to the very newspaper they work for.

Though the case remains unsolved to this day, the film (based on Gray-smith's own book) never runs out of steam. There are more than enough engrossing factoids here for an armchair investigator to get lost in, and lots of local color besides (who knew, for example, that San Francisco fixture Armistead Maupin torpedoed Toschi's career?). The sheer number of supporting players and suspects would be daunting if it weren't for the film's impeccable casting down to the most minor role (Brian Cox, Chloe Sevigny, and John Carroll Lynch make the most of their small parts). However, in the end, the lion's share of the credit has to go to the film's director.

Fincher has long been one of Hollywood's most detail-oriented technicians, a trait that can serve him well with the right film (Se7en, Fight Club) but turn him prickly when there's not enough in the material to engage him. The swooping computer-generated shots in Panic Room were the lean film's most superfluous element, and his longtime attachment to the low-budget skateboard pic Lords of Dogtown ended when he insisted that the film could only be made with tens of millions of dollars spent to recreate a pier from whole cloth. Fortunately, there's more than enough in Zodiac to slake Fincher's interest, and the film benefits from his stripped-down precision. These characters are as obsessive as he is, and the project feels like his most personal--and therefore his least cluttered.

"I am waiting for a good movie about me," says the Zodiac in one of his letters to the Chronicle. So is Leslie Vernon, the fictional murderer at the center of Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. Leslie doesn't aspire to be the Zodiac; he'd much rather be the next Freddy or Jason, two horror movie bogeymen who actually exist within the universe of Behind the Mask. To join their hallowed ranks and burnish his mystique, the young, good-looking Leslie (Nathan Baesel) entices documentary filmmaker Taylor Gentry (Angela Goethals) to chronicle his attempts to become the next great serial killer.

Though that setup sounds reminiscent of the cult classic Man Bites Dog, what director Scott Glosserman has come up with is more like a Jamie Kennedy monologue from Scream blown up to feature length. Leslie goes out of his way to set up--and send up--the conventions of a horror movie killer, whether it's picking a virginal "survivor girl" to torment or setting up elaborate and unnecessary booby traps. All the while, he calmly explains their role in creating his legend--but what he's really doing is deconstructing the ones we've already grown up with.

Horror fans will be flattered by the film's recitation of genre tropes, but by the time the hapless Taylor asks, "Leslie, what's a red herring?" I felt a bit worn out. Films like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween work because they tap into something primal--sex, fear of sleep, the cruelty of adolescence. Even the Zodiac, with his cryptograms and thinly veiled threats, proved a terrifying Rorshach test for our fears. Leslie's story has no such juice. All you find behind his mask, in the end, is a mean set of cheekbones.