With "Curse of the Zodiac" director Ulli Lommell rips off David Fincher's "Zodiac" a second time. Like Lommell's other recent horror efforts this is incompetently gory and exploitive. It has all his usual trademarks: shot on cheap video, highly repetitive, over-edited with tons of after-effects to cover up a budget of $0. The opening titles aren't bad though and in the previously stated categories it's not as bad as Lommell's "Black Dahlia", but that's like saying getting shot isn't as bad as burning to death.
This movie focuses on a girl who suffers from psychic episodes which show her the crimes of the Zodiac killer as they happen. Lommell's Zodiac killer is a bald white guy with tattoos on his neck, overdubbed with an annoying German voice. He taunts a writer over the phone who he only called "Fat F***" and mentally taunts the physic which he called "Pretty Girl". The soundtrack is flooded with Zodiac irritating voice, mocking the poorly defined "heroes" with what could be bad poetry.
The movie falls into a pattern of killings spaced by reactions to killings. The victims are almost exclusively women and they are always killed after having an argument with their man. It's as if this is a relationship movie edited together with a slasher movie. In the commentary Lommell claims this is meant to represent tension over women's liberation in the 70s. Until I heard this I didn't realize this was supposed to be set in the 70s, and assumed this was about the killer returning in present day or something equally stupid (Lommell's previous movie "Zodiac Killer" was about a present day copycat to the Zodiac).
Apart from the more puzzling aspects it is never less than obvious that is this is a cheapie. The sound even messes up a couple times during one of the killer's monologues. Many of these are peppered with what feels like hundreds of cuts back to the same couple of shots of the Golden Gate bridge. While it is impressive that they actually shot on location for this piece of crap, the poor use of the locations doesn't help. The acting sucks, of course, and the facts of the case are clumsily passed over in favor of endless boring murders. It feels like this script never had more than one draft.
In the end all I really have to say is Ulli Lommell. This idiot directs crap and only crap. He made "Zombie Nation". He makes fellow countryman Uwe Boll look good! His movies, like this one, were all made to confuse unobservant people in video stores to rent them thinking they're something else. But, honestly, if you're really dumb enough to rent this thinking it's a movie as good as the David Fincher "Zodiac" then you deserve to watch a movie as bad as Ulli Lommell's "Curse of the Zodiac".
