25 Years Later: ‘Se7en’ is Still a Dark and Disturbing Masterpiece

se7en 25 years
'SE7EN' via New Line Cinema

Vicious, dark, creepy, Se7en is one of those movies that wraps the feeling of dread around you like a blanket and doesn’t let go until you leave the theater. When I watched it for the first time, the dark and depressing atmosphere of the film made my skin crawl and 25 years later, that has not changed, a testament to all involved in making one of Hollywood’s most merciless movies.

Everything about this movie is bleak. It rains all the time in the city. There never seems to be daylight. Halls, rooms, and most crime scenes are either dimly lit or have an overwhelming sense of dread hanging over them. David Fincher sets the tone early on and never lets up, the bleak and depressing atmosphere getting under not only the character’s skin but the viewers as well. If there was ever a movie where the tone and atmosphere deserved an IMDb credit, this is it.

Somerset (Freeman) and Mills (Pitt) are detectives, the former the veteran, the latter the new kid on the block. They are thrown into the organized chaos and depravity of a killer who is using the Seven Deadly Sins as his guide, a template if you will, for punishing and murdering the guilty, although to him it is more like executing the sinners. The killer is smart and meticulous, having obviously planned this out over a long period of time. It is here that Somerset, who thinks he has seen it all, and Mills, who has never seen anything close to this, are thrust together.

Freeman and Pitt play off each other well, both at very times in their personal and professional lives, but both now feeling like a fish out of water. Freeman is especially effective as Somerset, a detective who is at the end of his career and looks like a man who has never really had a chance to live his life. Pitt gives Mills that wide-eyed enthusiastic new cop on the block look, and then as the murders play out we see the light slowly go out of his eyes, replaced by the look of confusion and fear.

Somerset spends time in a library, whose rows of books and dark shadows cast yet another sense of gloom over a film that is already neck-deep in it. Fincher uses this as a great horror tool, introducing the viewers to Milton’s Paradise Lost, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and Dante’s Inferno. It is great verbal and at times, visual eye candy for the audience, not to mention Mills, who is getting a lesson just as some viewers are. As the depth and intelligence of the killer reveal itself, the detectives, especially, Somerset, begin to realize they might be in over their heads.

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The killer himself doesn’t make an appearance until the last 30 minutes of the movie and from then on in, he dominates the screen as few have done before him. This character was vital to the film and how Fincher treated him, elevated Se7en to another level.

Fincher has a great eye and keen instinct in terms of how to make a film look and saturate the viewer with dark tones and dread. I still remember leaving the theater after seeing this film, feeling very disturbed yet entertained as well. The bleak world that Se7en offers is hard to digest at times, but riveting in its commitment to see the journey through to the end without compromise, no matter how dark and disturbing that path is.


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