Two American thrillers released within three months of each other in 1995 set the terms for the twenty years that followed.
Procedure as horror
Se7en took the serial-killer film and removed the chase. The detectives arrive after each murder, read what has been left for them, and are outpaced from the first scene. The killer is not hunted down; he walks into a police station. What replaced the chase was procedure — evidence, libraries, paperwork — and the discovery that procedure does not save anybody.
Professionalism as character
The other 1995 release worked the opposite side of the same street, treating cops and criminals as people defined entirely by competence at a job. Its influence is easier to see: a generation of crime films adopted its restraint, its long sightlines and its refusal to explain motive.
The inheritance
Zodiac, twelve years later, is the logical end point of the first tendency: a procedural in which the procedure fails completely and the case is never closed. Almost every prestige crime series of the 2010s is drawing on one of these two films, usually without acknowledging it.