Pitt returned to the set a few days later, having received stitches and a forearm cast, which had to be written into later scenes. Pitt insisted on performing his own stunts for the scene; he slipped on a rain-slicked hood, crashing through the windshield and sustaining injuries including cut tendons and nerves in his left hand; Fincher said he saw exposed bone. One segment had to be re-filmed because the location was too dark for the camera to capture Freeman’s face. The studio was unhappy with the darkness of the dailies; Khondji suggested printing the footage brighter but Fincher refused to compromise. Khondji used a mixture of lighting, using the warm light of Chinese lanterns to represent the past and present, and the cold light of Kino Flos to represent the future.
First gluttony, then greed and sloth, the terrifying criminal forces their victims to suffer at the hands of cleverly designed crimes. Get the freshest reviews, news, and more delivered right to your inbox! Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences. The sequel would have focused on a psychic serial killer pursued by William Somerset, who would have developed similar psychic abilities.
Khondji said Frank’s style could be seen in Seven’s very bright exteriors and dark interiors, a visual contrast achieved by underexposing the film negative. This was intended to create a stark contrast between the countryside and the darkness of the city but there was insufficient budget to film it. Because these scenes were filmed several months later than the rest of the film, the green ground had turned brown and the ground-based scenes had to be color-corrected to match the new footage. Fincher and Pitt both refused to compromise with the studio’s request to replace the head-in-the-box ending but settled for a longer epilogue showing Mills being arrested and Somerset delivering a concluding narration, offering some humanity.q According to Fincher, the box contained a taped shot bag with a wig.
In 2011, IFC ranked the sequence as the third-best-ever behind those of Vertigo (1958) and A Hard Day’s Night (1964), and its style can be seen in the opening credits of films such as Red Dragon (2002) and Taking Lives (2004). In audience-voted polls, Seven has been listed at number 15 (2006), 30, and 37 (2023) on lists of the greatest films conducted by the publications Total Film and Empire. Some, like Professor Jeremy Tambling, find allegorical links between sins and murders to be forced, questioning Doe’s embodiment of envy and representing lust through the victimized prostitute. Doe’s portrayal as an aesthete-killer draws comparisons with characters like fictional killers such as Hannibal Lecter, yet Doe does not define himself by high culture, surrounding himself with his own art.
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The unlikely pair chase after the killer and attempt to solve the case before another victim falls. Pitt and Paltrow also developed a romantic relationship while filming Seven.an Freeman’s performance established him as a mentor-type figure archetype, which he would reprise in many later projects. Seven’s use of non-mainstream music by Nine Inch Nails is also seen as contributing to increased use of similar songs in films such as Final Destination (2000) and Resident Evil (2002).
Title credits
The film has a score of 65 out of 100 seven casino on Metacritic based on 22 critics’ reviews, indicating “generally favorable reviews”. Empire’s 2008 poll of readers, Hollywood actors, and key film critics ranked Seven at number 134 on its list of the 500 Greatest Movies of All Time, while Time Out’s 2022 staff poll ranked it number 87. Seven was also highlighted by critic Roger Ebert in his series, The Great Movies, in 2011, and it is included in the film reference book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. In the 2020s, MovieWeb and Stuff called Seven one of the most memorable and “quintessential” crime thrillers of the 1990s, representing a high point of the genre and filmmaking for the decade. In a 2015 interview, Walker said that he remained proud of Seven despite criticisms from some audiences.
Pitt and Fincher were unhappy with the car-ride scene leading into the ending because the dialogue had to be overdubbed after too much ambient sound had been picked up during filming. Freeman preferred a storyboarded sequence of Somerset killing Doe, sparing Mills from losing his career as well, but Pitt believed Mills had to kill Doe and test audiences preferred that version. According to Fincher, the screening invitation only told audiences that the film would feature Pitt and Freeman, both of whom were known for films very different in tone to Seven. Walker was on set throughout filming to provide suggestions or on-spec rewrites but did not give Fincher much input, believing he should adapt the script as he wanted. He envisioned William Hurt playing the character but Fincher cast Freeman after the suggestion by Kopelson; the studio was concerned pairing a black detective with a white one would make Seven seem derivative of the action film Lethal Weapon (1987).
Audience Reviews
- Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013.
- In total, Seven grossed an estimated worldwide total of $327.3 million,ii This made it the seventh-highest-grossing film of the year.
- Subsequent genre films and television shows, such as The Bone Collector (1999), Along Came a Spider (2001), also starring Freeman, and the Saw series (2004), replicated Seven’s grim aesthetic, body horror imagery, and the premise of disenchanted detectives pursuing criminals with distinctive killing methods and motivations.
- Its title sequence, which depicts the killer preparing for his actions in the film, is considered an important design innovation that sparked a renewed interest in title design, while the film’s twist ending has been named as one of the most shocking and unforgettable in cinematic history.
- In the opening scene, Walker portrays a corpse lying in a pool of blood; he said the blood was very cold and he had a minor panic attack once in place because he was worried about moving and ruining the shot.
- His resigned acceptance of the envy sin after assigning wrath to Mills is, according to Goldberg, because there is no other sin for him to take and he is conscious sin will not end with his death.
Fincher preferred Paltrow but initial discussions suggested that if approached she would not be interested in a film with a dark tone like Seven. Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, and Al Pacino rejected the role.k The script was further modified after Pitt’s and Freeman’s castings to better match their acting styles; Mills was made more verbose and Somerset’s dialogue was reduced, and made more precise and direct. Kopelson and studio executives continued efforts to lighten Seven’s tone and change the ending.h Fincher was resistant to any changes, and was unwilling to compromise his creative control and vision.
Box office
- The final scene with Mills, Somerset, and Doe, had inconsistent lighting because the actors were always lit from behind by the sun regardless of their placement in the scene.
- In discussions with Michael De Luca, New Line Cinema’s president of production, both shared a preference for the original script.
- One segment had to be re-filmed because the location was too dark for the camera to capture Freeman’s face.
- Bottin’s team spent 11 days experimenting on the aesthetic and prosthetics for the sloth victim.
- Film scholar Amy Taubin described the city as an infection point for corruption, in which signs of violence and decay are omnipresent in its dark corners, rain, television reports, fights, screams, and children in impoverished apartments.
- “Portrait of John Doe” serves as the central theme with two cue notes; a rising version is used for Tracy’s appearances.
The helicopter scenes were also filmed in post-production because there was no time during principal photography; the studio agreed the provision of extra time and funding for additional scenes if they were deemed necessary. Set in an unnamed, crime-ridden city, the narrative follows disenchanted, nearly retired Detective Lieutenant William Somerset and his newly transferred partner David Mills as they try to stop a serial killer from committing a series of murders based on the seven deadly sins. They soon realize they are dealing with a serial killer (Kevin Spacey) who is targeting people he thinks represent one of the seven deadly sins. A serial killer on the loose uses the seven deadly sins as inspiration for his murders.
Style and set design
Of particular focus is the Divine Comedy which depicts seven terraces of purgatory, each relating to an individual sin, and the nine circles of hell.al Professor Steve Macek interprets the unnamed city as an allegory for the hell in the Divine Comedy. Doe strategically conceals a crucial clue to his plot at the greed murder scene by turning a piece of art upside down, a detail discernible only by someone versed in art, and reflecting the city’s own upturned status. Doe creates order by filtering literature about the seven deadly sins and works by authors such as John Milton through a lens of religious fanaticism.
In the years since its release, Seven has grown in esteem, receiving general critical praise, and being described by the British Film Institute (BFI) as a groundbreaking thriller. Doe’s notebooks offer insight into his misanthropic worldview, revealing disdain for the city and extreme reactions to mundane urban interactions. During the final scene’s car ride, Somerset detects a baser motive in Doe, suggesting he takes pleasure in killing people.
Although the time of the story is the present, the set design suggests the 1940s; Gary Wissner, the art director, goes for dark blacks and browns, deep shadows, lights of deep yellow, and a lot of dark wood furniture. Even when all the lights are turned on in the apartments of the victims, they cast only wan, hopeless pools of light. This is a very dark film, the gloom often penetrated only by the flashlights of the detectives. “Seven,” a dark, grisly, horrifying and intelligent thriller, may be too disturbing for many people, I imagine, although if you can bear to watch, it you will see filmmaking of a high order.
Khondji described the scene in which Mills pursues Doe as one of the most-difficult scenes to film due to its length, fast camera movements in rain, and tight, barely lit interior spaces. Khondji used Panavision Primo lenses, which offered a sharp image with good contrast, and Kodak film stocks that could capture the “gritty” interiors and deep blacks for night-time exteriors. Seven’s aesthetic was influenced by films such as All That Jazz (1979), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and The French Connection (1971), as well as the over-the-shoulder viewpoint used in documentary television show Cops because of its implicit vulnerability. Rain often fell during filming; Fincher decided to film in rain to avoid continuity errors and because Pitt was only available for fifty-five days before he began filming 12 Monkeys (1995).
