Metacritic reviews

Zodiac exhausts more than one genre. Termite art par excellence, it burrows for the sake of burrowing, as fascinated by its own nooks and crannies as "Inland Empire."

The movie holds you in its grip from start to finish.

Zodiac never veers from its stoically gripping, police-blotter tone, yet it begins to take on the quality of a dream.

Firing on all cylinders as a creepy thriller, police procedural and "All the President's Men"-style investigative newsroom drama, the smart, extremely vivid production oozes period authenticity.

Conveying an astonishing array of information across a long narrative arc while still maintaining dramatic rhythm and tension, this adaptation of Robert Graysmith's bestseller reps by far director David Fincher's most mature and accomplished work.

Zodiac may be the perfect meeting of filmmaker and subject ­-- an obsessive's portrait of obsession that is, finally, a monument to irresolution.

Unique and unmissable.

It makes for a daringly different kind of thriller -- cerebral, meticulous, haunting.

What begins like your basic police procedural becomes more and more choppy and diffuse. To a point, that’s intentional: Zodiac was never caught, and Fincher aims to creep you out with the lack of closure.

At 2 1/2 hours, the film is too long in the telling and too short on suspense.