The Most Dangerous Animal of All

Just the name of the fourth episode made me feel like "eh" I felt duped. Hard to believe and the "son" and PI seemed to get caught up on their own would be fame.

I watched this doc thinking it was about unmasking the Zodiac killer. It is not. It is about an abandoned boy's longing to find his missing father which turns to obsession. The first three episodes are gripping if you think you are about to see the Zodiac unveiled, then the bubble is burst in the fourth episode when you discover you have been led down a path on which the author and the perpetrator of the lie himself have been lost using the same erroneous conclusions based on misleading misinformation.

A big disappointment for any viewer, unless you watch to see a sad man waste his life fooling himself with his own lies. In the end I felt for him, but more felt disgust that the filmmakers would profit from this broken man's story and would waste our time on it.

"The Most Dangerous Animal of All" is a well-made docuseries that grips you from the get-go. The dismal reviews on IMDB could be due to the disappointment some viewers might have felt upon realizing that this series is not what they thought it would be.

The series takes great pain in meticulously recreating the monumental research led by Mr. Stewart in unearthing who his father was - was he the infamous serial killer, Zodiac, or was he a mentally disturbed man who happened to have lived a rather peculiar parallel life with the real Zodiac? He carries deep mental scars related to abandonment by his father, broken personal relations, and, most importantly - shattered self-identity. I was moved by Gary Stewart's unrelenting pursuit to discover his origins. He worked hard in order to prove to himself that his present self is a manifestation of the actions of a deeply disturbed individual. I was disappointed when it is subsequently revealed that he might have made critical errors in coming to that judgment. There are some compelling pieces of evidence presented that almost had me convinced that his father was indeed the Zodiac. Then the director introduces you to facts that make you realize that Gary had and is still being sucked into a deep rabbit hole. It is heartbreaking to see his inability to walk away even when critical facts, as and when presented, contradicts the complex narrative that he has created over the past seventeen years. Events are presented based on the book, and once the thread of unbelievable coincidences is put under the microscope, the facade begins to crumble. Even the co-author of Gary's book is eventually left flabbergasted.

The technical aspects of the series are solid - the sense of foreboding, moody lighting, chilling sound design, surreal reenactments, scenes of forensic importance - are all done very well. They all seem appropriate for the dark subject matter of a series that dares to support and then tear down an unbelievable theory that left the experts scratching their heads.

I'll highly recommend this program if you are interested in discovering how far a broken spirit will go, even at the expense of coming across as self-serving, for a peaceful resolution that is still far from having been achieved. It seems Gary Stewart wants to catch lightning in a bottle; he wants to own a phantom and make it known to the world as his unfortunate destiny. Unfortunately, it is abundantly clear that it is not the case.

This was sad - on a deep level. Gary (the main character) was so mentally and emotionally unstable, that by the 2nd episode, I was done watching it. Seeing this obsessive man justify his his issues by calling it "I have to find my father"...so much so that he literally ruins every single relationship in real life in order to feed a delusion all to try to make the Zodiac killer "fit" his narrative and allow him to be SOMEBODY (after what obviously is debilitating low self esteem). His poor wife HAS to be a victim of emotional and verbal abuse...smh. No adult that broken or obsessive has ANY healthy relationships - I'm sorry.

Well, that was 4 hours and $5.97 in rentals wasted. It was very entertaining until the last ten minutes and then all I could think is there were so many things I could have been watching instead. I felt betrayed. It's just a hoax on the part of the film makers. They make you and their subject believe for the first 3 hours and 50 minutes that this is all true, that the case is solved. It's not. It's all bologna. The only reason I can see this got made was because the filmmakers didn't figure it out until the end, because Gary's story is so convincing, and that they had to salvage their show. This could have been a 1-hour documentary about what's real. Instead, the filmmakers wasted the audience time by duping them.

Gary, the son has more integrity than the filmmakers because he honestly believed he's the son of the Zodiak Killer. And you just feel bad for him and his co-author by the end. I never got the sense Gary was trying to dupe anyone, he just got caught up in it, and it did seem enough like it was his dad that we were talking about it afterwards, thinking, "Maybe he really is?" And, who knows, maybe the family in Austria lied because they don't want to be attached to the Zodiak, but it would make sense of the time gap where Earl Van Best Jr disappears. In the end, they don't have enough evidence to prove he is, but they don't have enough to prove he isn't. The police have the DNA but won't say whether Earl Van Best Jr is or isn't the Zodiak. It would have been easy for them to say definitively, but the detective chose not to, which does seem suspicious. It could be that the cops don't want an amateur detective to figure out their case and so they're not saying anything and would rather let it die than come out with the truth. Who knows, but the way they wrap it up quickly after leading you down this rabbit hole for 3 hrs and 50 minutes that he did do it, then in the last 10 minutes to be like, oh, by the way, he didn't, it's impossible...all I gotta say are the filmmakers are real tools.

I think the filmmakers felt it made them look like super sleuths, but it just made them look like jerks behind the camera who are screwing over Gary and his co-author. 'Cause it's never clear if they know all along that the Zodiak is or isn't his dad. So they could have been doubtful and completely screwing them for money and to advance their careers, or, still completely screwing them, but not knowing until the end. Either way, it makes the filmmakers look like opportunist parasitic jerks, and not the other way around. The only reason I'm not giving it a 1 star is because it was entertaining and engrossing...but it was all meaningless. It was a con. A con on the audience by the filmmakers who clearly have no integrity. They could have treated everyone involved with respect by not putting this out since they have no story, or telling the truth in a 1-hour documentary. I'm sure the filmmakers feel real pleased with themselves, but this is exactly why so few people believe the news or documentaries anymore 'cause, not only are they usually one-sided, sometimes they're complete lies, like this was.