All Charlie Shackleton had to do was give the Sundance Film Festival a 90-second video introducing himself and his documentary Zodiac Killer Project, which premiered at the festival on Monday. Instead,

Watch enough true-crime documentaries and patterns begin to emerge—a situation that speaks to the genre’s embrace of a cookie-cutter formula defined by a host of recurring narrative and formal tropes.

Director Charlie Shackleton's meta project about the notorious serial killer challenges, with wry humor, our entire approach to true crime.

Starting off with a Netflix film, The Tinder Swindler covers the horrors a group of women endured after using the world’s most popular dating app, Tinder. The true story sees a seemingly charming and super-rich man make women fall in love with him. However, this is all a mask for him to con them out of enormous sums of money.

Two titles in the non-fiction category play with real-life expectations as well as filmmaking conventions. While Zodiac Killer Project is a meta-examination of the true crime show, The Dating Game looks at Chinese men hunting for romantic partners.

Director Charlie Shackleton had his Zodiac killer documentary shut down. Debuting at Sundance, his new film explains how it would've unfolded.

The Zodiac Killer Project by Charlie Shackleton masterfully exposes the tricks and tropes of true crime. It just debuted at Sundance.