Director Report Card: David Fincher (1995)

3. Seven

Following the tumultuous production of “Alien 3,” David Fincher almost gave up on making movies altogether. He went back to making music videos, directing well-regarded clips for the Rolling Stones, Madonna, and Michael Jackson. That is when a script by a nobody named Andrew Kevin Walker, whose sole previous credit was campy slasher flick “BrainScan,” crossed his desk. The script was called “Seven” and Fincher immediately dismissed it, as just another police procedural. After reading a little deeper, he fell in love with it. With the backing of big star Brad Pitt, New Line Studios ensured the director the creative control he was denied on “Alien 3”. The resulting film would be the first Fincher truly considered his own.  

Detective Somerset is a week out from retirement. Left thoroughly cynical after years on the force in a hellish city, Somerset is looking forward to no longer being a cop. This is when he's paired up with Detective Mills, a younger cop eager to make a difference. The two investigate a bizarre homicide: A morbidly obese man seemingly force-fed food until he died. The next day, another victim is discovered: A lawyer was forced, at gunpoint, to sliced off a pound of his own flesh. “Greed” is written in blood on the floor before him. Somerset discovers the word “gluttony” at the first murder scene. It soon becomes apparent that a serial killer, seeking to theme each murder around the Seven Deadly Sins, is responsible. As Somerset and Mills investigate, they descend into the darkness of the human condition.

On the surface, “Seven” does seem to indulge most of the clichés of the cop thriller. Somerset's impending retirement absolutely insures that something bad is going to happen to him in the days leading up to the date. The heroes have their balls busted by a grouchy police chief. When Somerset is paired up with the younger, less cynical Mills, “Seven” practically becomes a buddy cop movie. The two men are at odds at first, Somerset insisting his partner is inexperienced. Yet, as they work harder on the case, they inevitably grow closer to one another. To the point that Mills invites Somerset to his home, to meet his wife and dogs. “Seven” even partakes in some of the casual homoeroticism of the buddy cop genre, when the two men shave their chests together. The story relies on contrived plot points, like a secret government library watch list, to allow its story to keep going.

“Seven” would also almost invent some clichés of its own. Following in the footsteps of “The Silence of the Lambs,” with its serial killers with well-defined methodology and convoluted schemes and compulsions, “Seven” would be the movie to truly cement the idea of the hyper-elaborate serial killer into the public's mind. “Seven's” killer has been plotting his murder spree for years. Every last detail of the slayings has a deeper meaning to his master plan. His plot depends on people acting a certain way exactly when he expects them too, which they do. Once you start to think about, John Doe's scheme becomes absurd. How does he have time to fill his notebooks full of insanity scrawl, take care of a man that's been bound to a bed for a year, perform his meditated acts of torture and murder, and work a day job? It's not surprising that lesser movies, like “Saw” and its imitators, would make the idea of a serial killer with a detailed plan to even higher realms of silliness.

Despite its excesses and reliance on formula, there's a reason “Seven's” script still works. Andrew Kevin Walker set out to wrote the most pitch black noir imaginable. “Seven” takes place in a world that is completely without hope. In the very first scene, Somerset dresses himself in his apartment while his neighbors yell at each other off-screen. He next investigates a crime scene, where a woman murdered her husband, her child, and then herself. He goes on to describe even more senselessly cruel and violent crimes. John Doe's reign of terror is only the latest and most extreme example of this world's absolute cruelty. It's no wonder, when Mills' wife discovers she's pregnant, she genuinely wonders if it's worth bringing life into this pitiless world.  

What would be described as edgy nihilism in any other movie is excused here because “Seven” so vividly creates its hopeless universe. Walker's script was influenced by the bad mood he was in while living in New York City. “Seven's” nameless metropolis – which feels very East Coast but is surrounded by desert somehow – feels like the most extreme version of cinema's endless NYC variants. It is perpetually raining throughout the story's week, casting an unendingly dour and downbeat tone over the entire movie. This is far from the only example of the way “Seven” creates its particular tone. The police station is under sickly lights and drab wallpaper. John Doe's lair is filled wall-to-ceiling with perfectly placed clutter, as chaotic as his mad mind. The only place in “Seven's” world that is warm and full of light is Mills and his wife's apartment, representing the sole bead of humanity in this heartless universe. 

The production design is part of what makes “Seven” so horrifying. The murder scenes are exceptionally disgusting. The Gluttony murder scene is crawling with cockroaches, every surface in the apartment seemingly caked with grease and grime. These hellish locations are the ideal places to find the utterly grotesque corpses of John Doe's victims. Rob Bottin, the master effects man behind “The Thing,” was tasked with creating the most horrifying bodies imaginable. Gluttony is a bloated mass, with every burst capillary and strangulated vein visible through his gray skin. The sliced flesh and skinned bodies of later victims look as believable as possible. Bottin's indisputable masterpiece of the film is Sloth. Bottin and his team did an excellent job of creating an emaciated, diseased looking body that is still visibly human, just simply pushed past the point of sanity and civility. You can smell the effects in this film, a testament to the grody power and pure, visceral disgust they invoke. 

No matter how excellent the film's production design and world-building might be, I'm certain “Seven” wouldn't work nearly as well as it does without David Fincher in the director's chair. Fincher directs the hell out of this movie. The director expertly de-saturated the color from each scene, adding to the bleak feeling and continue the use of blacks and whites he specialized in during his musical video days. Exclamation points of bright color are occasionally put into this grim palette. Usually in the form of blood but sometimes in the strobing red lights of the sleaziest sex club on Earth. Another of Fincher's trademarks, a moving camera, makes that scene a perfectly effective descent into neon-soaked hell, the feeling of unease and depravity growing the longer on it goes. That same moving camera also makes a foot chase through the city, the sole thing “Seven” has to an action scene, even more fantastically gripping. The incredibly tight editing and flashy techniques run throughout, keeping “Seven” riveting and visually distinctive throughout. 

A character like Detective Somerset, who is grizzled by a life time of exposure to the worst the world has to offer but still maintains a certain level of respectability, required a particular actor. Of course, nobody brings with them a natural degree of gravitas like Morgan Freeman. We are so used to hearing Freeman intone wise words of wisdom from on-high that his few moments of voice-over almost become comical. Fortunately, Freeman isn't just playing a wise mentor here. Somerset has a compelling character arc, a man with a bone-deep cynicism that will have the thinnest wisp of faith he still holds in human kind shaken by the script's events. Say what you will about that epilogue but it perfectly brings Somerset's story to an end. As hopeless as it may be, he's going to keep fighting because somebody has to. 

Brad Pitt's star wattage is what made sure David Fincher was allowed to make “Seven” the way he wanted. The film would also insure that Pitt was regarded as more than just a pretty face. Pitt plays Mills as a temperamental rookie who insists he's not a rookie. Pitt's incredible charm makes sure the audience finds Mills' rougher edges appealing, instead of off-putting. Better yet is how Pitt plays off Freeman. The chemistry they share in numerous scenes, such as when Pitt attempts to recall the name of an officer who died on his day as a cop, keeps the film going during its more low-key moments. It's not just his movie star charm that makes Pitt so well utilized here. In his final scene, where he's pulled between grief and rage and his inner morality, all that conflict is on his face and in is anguished delivery.

Some of the dread and creepiness “Seven” creates is partially unintentional through modern eyes. Casting Kevin Spacey as a moralizing psychopath makes the audience cringe in unexpected ways in 2021. Yet Spacey's surprise appearance as John Doe is, no doubt, fantastically effective. He speaks every mad thing he says with absolute conviction, even bringing some (extremely dark) humor to his particular line-reading. It's a good contrast against Gwyneth Paltrow as Tracy, Mills' wife and the sole spot of sunshine in the movie. Paltrow is certainly capable of projecting charm and light in her few scenes. You also can't help but notice veteran character actors like R. Lee Ermey and Richard Roundtree cast as the ineffective voices of authority. 

While Fincher was largely allowed to have his way throughout “Seven,” it wasn't from a lack of trying on the studio's end. “Seven's” ending was much contested, New Line constantly hoping for a more upbeat conclusion. Some of these versions – such as Somerset taking out John Doe before Mills pulls the trigger – weren't bad... Yet it's hard to argue with the power of that final sequence. Fincher combines the God-like view from the police helicopter, watching hopelessly as these grim events unfold, with more intense moments on the ground. The reveal, of what exactly is in the box, is still a horrific gut-punch of a twist. It's that last third were “Seven” successfully upends all the cliches it's set-up in the proceeding 100 minutes. The cops don't catch the killer. He reveals himself. Good doesn't prevail, as John Doe's plan succeeds. “Seven” is absolute in its dread-filled hopelessness, dragging you along to its shocking final minutes.

Further cluing the audience in that “Seven” takes place in a rain-soaked, sorrowful alternate universe is the soundtrack. Howard Shore scores the movie like a Wagnerian opera. The musical themes are huge and full of emotion, especially in the last act. That score might actually be what keeps the movie from spinning off into melodrama, as Shore's music invokes the exact needed emotions. The movie is also bookended by two great needle drops. A heavily remixed version of Nine Inch Nails' “Closer” plays over the stylized opening credits, the droning industrial scream establishing the feeling of hopelessness early on. The movie concludes with David Bowie's “The Heart's Filthy Lesson,” which seems fitting. The characters' hearts, the surviving ones anyway, have certainly learned a filthy lesson. 

Ultimately, “Seven” might not be as deep as it thinks it is. Whether the film actually has much to say about sin or justice or the lack thereof is debatable and up to personal interpretation. The film is most successful to me as an exercise in style. Its ideas work because it so effectively creates an exaggerated netherworld on-screen. Shockingly, this blend would work for mainstream audiences too. “Seven” would become a surprise box office hit in 1995, move-goers apparently not minding the bleakness so much. It would spawn a flurry of imitators – including a failed attempt at a sequel, which would've gifted Detective Somerset with psychic powers – but the original still maintains a grim power to unsettle and horrify all these years later. [Grade: A]