Stream It Or Skip It: ‘This Is The Zodiac Speaking’ On Netflix, A Docuseries About The Long-Suspected Zodiac Killer, Arthur Leigh Allen (2024)

This Is The Zodiac Speaking is a three-part docuseries, directed by Ari Mark and Phil Lott, that examines how Arthur Leigh Allen, long suspected to be the infamous Zodiac Killer, terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Zodiac Killer had five known victims, but letters he sent into San Francisco newspapers, complete with coded messages that were only partially broken, claimed that he killed dozens. But the Seawater family knew him as a teacher and a family friend.

THIS IS THE ZODIAC SPEAKING: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes of an empty community pool and complex, and people from the Seawater family talking about how graceful a diver Arthur Leigh Allen was, especially for a big man.

The Gist: The series goes back and forth between the early 1960s, with interviews with the various Seawater siblings who had Allen as a teacher when they were in elementary school, and the late 1960s, when the murder of a young couple in Vallejo was followed up by the first of the Zodiac letters.

Because Allen was helping the Seawater’s mother, who was raising the family on her own, the siblings didn’t find some of Allen’s behavior to be that odd, especially when it came to how he acted around young girls. One of the siblings talks about being told later on that he was grooming her, but back then that term didn’t even exist.

Back to 1969, the Zodiac killer taunts the papers and the police with his letters, complete with a crosshairs-like symbol at the end. He shoots some people and stabs others. He threatens to kill children on a school bus. Robert Graysmith, a San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist who became one of the reporters pursuing the case, is interviewed, and over 50 years later, the notion that the Zodiac killer would shoot up a school bus still makes him emotional. He documents some near misses law enforcement experienced in nabbing Allen after some of the killings. He also was one of the people who started suspecting that Allen was the Zodiac killer, but had no hard evidence to tie him to the murders.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Mastermind: To Think Like A Killer, Making A Murderer, The Jinx, Conversations With A Killer… there’s no shortage of docuseries about serial killers, including numerous documentaries and series about the Zodiac Killer. There’s also David Fincher’s 2007 true crime epic, Zodiac, which focuses more on Graysmith’s pursuit of the story than the killer himself.

Our Take: What makes This Is The Zodiac Speaking stand out from other documentaries about serial killers in general and Zodiac specifically is that Mark and Lott get the perspective of a family who knew the alleged killer in a much different context. Even sixty-plus years after Allen was in the lives of the Seawater family, the children that were often in his company and under his care have fond memories of him, despite knowing what they know about him now.

We’re usually not a fan of docuseries that hopscotch back and forth on a story’s timeline, but the storytelling method is useful here, mainly to serve as a contrast and to fill in some blanks on murders Allen likely committed before the spate of Zodiac murders hit Northern California starting late in 1968. Given how the Seawaters talked about him, the contrast between the strange man who played folk music and songs from The Mikado in class and was a graceful diver and swimmer and the man who wrote those letter was stark.

Because the killings were over five decades ago, there does seem to be a “now or never” feel to the interviews, given that the Seawaters are all over 70, Graysmith is in his 80s and friends of some of his early and late victims are also in that age group. Their recall of their perspectives of Allen are as clear to them as they might have been decades ago, which, combined with restrained reenactments, archival news footage, photographs and home movies of Allen paints a dynamic picture of a man who doesn’t fit the usual serial killer stereotype.

Sleeper Star: Graysmith’s recall of what he did to report the Zodiac’s activity fifty-five years ago is remarkable.

Most Pilot-y Line: None we could find.

Our Call: STREAM IT. This Is The Zodiac Speaking gives a fresh perspective on a serial killer story that’s decades old but never had a full resolution.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.