“…even though I’d never really imagined making a true crime documentary, working in documentary [filmmaking] these days, true crime kinda got this gravitational pull.”

Story: Charlie Shackleton is a documentary filmmaker on a mission; to do a documentary on a true crime novel he’d had his eye on for a while. But when he doesn’t get the rights to the novel? He does the next best thing; he makes a documentary about making documentaries, and by extension, the true crime genre itself.

Genre I’d put it in: Squashed Documentaries Turned Into Different Documentaries
Release Date: 2025 (festival/limited), 2026 (DVD and Blue-ray )
Remake, Sequel, Based-On, or Original: Based on the director Charlie Shackleton’s unrealized documentary, based on the nonfiction book “The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge” by Lyndon Lafferty

Gotta say: I love true crime. Well, kinda. One of my major concentrations in undergrad was criminology, and I’m a huge horror movie nerd. So basically, I love a story that both digs into the darker depths of humanity while ultimately proving that justice can prevail. Sometimes though, true crime digs into stories where justice not only doesn’t prevail, it’s actively mocked. In Project, Shackleford takes a book about an unsolved crime, fails at being allowed to adapt it, and then leaves us with the idea that perhaps not everything can be neatly tied up with a bow. This might be the most meta documentary I’ve ever seen.

Shackleford’s narration has a “Werner Herzog but lively” kinda vibe. He often giggles, showing us that he’s having a blast making fun of his own pretentions. Projects‘ use of layered storytelling – part autopsy of a failed documentary, part look at the overused tropes of true crime – will be catnip for film students who’d like a closeup view of the filmmaking process. In fact, I’d recommend this to film professors as a film their students can watch for an interesting look at moviemaking. And, of course, how they’ll need to shake it off when some projects they’re stoked about ultimately never come to be.

While I was interested in Shackleton’s story, I wasn’t glued to it. It feels more like a video podcast than a documentary who’s images I needed to focus on. Or better yet, a dinner party discussion, one that happens after dessert and everyone’s tired and just wants to be entertained by a detailed personal anecdote. The intimacy of Shackleton’s storytelling doesn’t really come around to a central idea.

I’d have liked more overt connections to the true crime genre in general, to give the film a more powerful voice. Or at least have him discuss more in-depth his reasons for getting pulled into this genre besides a vague impression that “it seemed cool”. Shackleton does end things with several direct looks at popular series in the genre, which hints at the more intriguing dissection of the genre. This ending feels like a dump of ideas rather than a theme that’s woven throughout the documentary.

That said, I do love the moments when he discusses how he’d have made his documentary by using split screens that show how moment’s he’d have done would have echoed so many other documentaries and mini-series almost exactly. And I did love how he took the piss out of Ryan Murphy’s Dahmer by critiquing the series’ focus on sensationalism, then record-scratch switch to condemning that very thing at the end of the series. Preach it, Chris.

In the course of making Project, did Shackleton inadvertently make the documentary he’d wanted to? Well, kinda. Throughout this film, he mentions bits from the book he can’t delve deeper into (with lawyers making sure he treads lightly). Instead, he created a documentary that harks back to documentaries that talk about specific films, like Hearts of Darkenss and Jodorowsky’s Dune, though Project is a bit unclear, unlike these more focused docs. Like Shackleton’s documentary that never was, Project is a tantalizing whiff of the possibilities this film could have held.

#Protip: Did I get you interested about documentaries that focus on films? Here, go watch some.