It has been 31 years since a twisted psychological thriller traumatized audiences with one of the darkest endings in movie history. There might not be a better genre to create twisted and horrific stories than the psychological thriller. Unlike more straightforward thrillers or more visceral horror movies, the psychological thriller is a genre that delves deep into the minds of the characters and often forces the viewers to look deeper into their own souls when seeing what is happening on the screen. These movies go back in history, with Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpieces like Psycho and Vertigo dealing with psychological horror, as both movies show a person’s fractured mind and how it leads to terrifying circumstances.
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While those classic examples show how a psychological thriller can shake up an audience, there was a movie released in the 1990s that did it on an entirely new level, and it still hasn’t been beaten since its release. The movie starred two of Hollywood’s biggest stars and focused on them investigating some horrific murders before realizing that the truth was darker than anyone could have realized. On September 22, 1995, David Fincher’s Se7en was released in theaters and shook up the moviegoing audience like no other film before or since.
What Makes Se7en Such a Twisted Psychological Thriller?
It has been 31 years since Se7en was released into theaters, but it is still a movie that has the same deflating effect on audiences now as it did in the 1990s. If anything, Se7en was a calling card movie for David Fincher, whose only other previous movie was the sequel Alien 3, which was critically panned and, thanks to studio interference, wasn’t even the vision that Fincher had when he was working on it. With Se7en, Fincher had a chance to release a movie that lined up with his vision, and even with his impressive filmography, it is still the darkest thriller he ever released.
Se7en is a murder mystery thriller that follows a disillusioned police detective named William Somerset, a man one week away from his retirement. He is assigned to a serial killer case concerning a man using the motif of the Seven Deadly Sins to commit his murders. His partner is a young, short-tempered but idealistic detective named David Mills, a man who just moved to the city with his wife, Tracy. However, this movie isn’t about the serial killer, who isn’t even given a name. It is about David Mills and how this dark city can destroy a good man.
Morgan Freeman stars as Somerset, and his weary attitude shows how the city and its crimes have already beaten him down over the years. At the same time, Brad Pitt stars as Mills, and this was before Pitt was an A-list star, showing here that he was more than just a pretty face as he heads into the new murder case head-on without realizing where the road would lead him. Gwyneth Paltrow should also receive credit for her smaller role as David’s wife, Tracy, someone who is trying to build a new life with David in the dark city after learning she is pregnant with their baby. When the killer, who was only referred to as John Doe (Kevin Spacey), turns himself in, everything falls apart.
Se7en Is Still the Most Twisted Psychological Thriller All These Years Later
Se7en is a movie that has no good ending, and it doesn’t even have an ending that is faintly optimistic. This is a movie that sets out to destroy the heroes and show that being idealistic and good doesn’t mean anything when the city is so dark that it will destroy all signs of light. It is easy to see the film as nihilistic, but there is more to it than that. Se7en is a movie that uses the Seven Deadly Sins to perfection, and it might be the most intricately paced script of Fincher’s directorial career. Written by Andrew Kevin Walker, Fincher directs the film masterfully, leading the last shocking moment to a close with precision that allows the entire story and themes to play out masterfully.
By the end of the movie, five of the seven deadly sins have been completed, and when Mills and Somerset have John Doe in custody, they believe they stopped him in time. They didn’t. While taking John Doe to the location where they would find the envy and wrath victims, they had no idea that envy was closer to the detectives than they suspected and that wrath had yet to occur. When Se7en ends, all seven sins have been revealed, and the last two deaths destroyed one of the detectives forever.
The movie was a huge box office success, but when I left the theater after my screening, the audience left in complete silence. Everyone was shell-shocked, and no one could believe that Fincher would end this movie in such a dark, nihilistic manner. The final voice-over had Somerset say that “Ernest Hemingway once wrote, ‘The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.” That is what the movie argued. Things are worth fighting for, but there is nothing fine about this world.
What fans received was a noir storyline with a dark ending and an examination of evil in a world where the good guys don’t always win. This is a movie where the bad guys win in the end, even with their own deaths. The idea that John Doe died but still won is something that movies tried to replicate for years after Se7en. Thanks to its neo-noir visual style, uncompromising bleakness, and an ending that refused to let up, Se7en remains a landmark in the serial killer and psychological thriller genre, and few movies have matched its brilliance.
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