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Seven
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	David Fincher
Written by	Andrew Kevin Walker
Starring	Brad Pitt Morgan Freeman Gwyneth Paltrow John C. McGinley
Cinematography	Darius Khondji
Edited by	Richard Francis-Bruce
Music by	Howard Shore
Production company	Arnold Kopelson Productions
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release dates	September 15, 1995 (1995-09-15) (Alice Tully Hall) September 22, 1995 (1995-09-22) (United States)
Running time	127 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$33 million
Box office	$327.3 million

Seven (stylized as SE7EN) is a 1995 American neo-noir psychological crime thriller film directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker. It stars Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow and John C. McGinley. The film tells the story of David Mills (Pitt), a detective who partners with the retiring William Somerset (Freeman) to track down a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as a motif in his murders.

The screenplay was influenced by the time Walker spent in New York City trying to make it as a writer. Principal photography took place in Los Angeles, with the last scene filmed near Lancaster, California. The film's budget was $33 million.

Released on September 22, 1995, by New Line Cinema, Seven was the seventh-highest-grossing film of the year, grossing over $327 million worldwide. It was well received by critics and was nominated for Best Film Editing at the 68th Academy Awards, losing to Apollo 13.

Plot

In a city overcome with violent crime and corruption, disillusioned police detective, William Somerset, is one week from retirement. He is partnered with David Mills, a short-tempered but idealistic detective who recently relocated to the city with his wife, Tracy. On Monday, Somerset and Mills investigate an obese man forced to eat until his stomach burst, killing him, and uncover the word "gluttony" written on the wall. Somerset fails to get himself and Mills reassigned to another case, believing it is too extreme for his last investigation. The following day, the second victim, greed, is found, having been forced to cut a pound of flesh from his body. Clues at the scene lead Somerset and Mills to the sloth victim, a drug-dealing pederast, who they find emaciated and restrained to a bed. Photographs reveal the victim was restrained for exactly one year. Somerset surmises that the murders are based on the seven deadly sins.

Tracy invites Somerset to share supper with her and Mills, helping the detectives overcome their mutual hostility toward each other. On Friday, Tracy meets privately with Somerset as she has no other acquaintances in the city. She reveals her unhappiness at moving there, especially after learning she is pregnant, and believes the city is an unfit place to raise a child. Somerset sympathises with Tracy, having convinced his former girlfriend to abort their child for similar reasons and regretting it ever since; he advises her to inform Mills only if she intends to keep the child.

A comment by Mills inspires Somerset to research libraries for anyone checking-out books based on the seven deadly sins, leading the pair to the apartment of John Doe. The suspect returns home unexpectedly and is pursued by Mills, who is incapacitated after being struck with a tire iron by Doe. Mills is held at gunpoint momentarily, but Doe chooses to flee. The police investigate Doe's apartment, finding a large amount of cash, hundreds of notebooks revealing Doe's psychopathy, and photos of some of his victims, including images taken of Somerset and Mills by what they believed was an intrusive journalist at the Sloth crime scene. Doe calls the apartment and speaks of his admiration for Mills.

On Saturday, Somerset and Mills investigate the fourth victim, lust, a prostitute raped with a custom-made, bladed strap-on by a man held at gunpoint. The fifth victim is found the following day, a model facially disfigured by Doe who committed the sin of pride by taking a drug overdose instead of living without her physical beauty. As Somerset and Mills return to the police station, Doe arrives and turns himself in. He threatens to plead insanity at his trial, potentially escaping punishment, unless Mills and Somerset escort him to an undisclosed location where they will find the envy and wrath victims. During the drive there, Doe explains that he believes himself to be chosen by God to send a message about the ubiquity of and apathy toward sin. Doe has no remorse for his victims, believing the shocking murders will force society to pay attention to him.

Doe leads the detectives to a remote location, where a delivery van approaches. Somerset intercepts the vehicle and opens a package the driver was instructed to deliver to Mills at this specific time. Upset at what he finds, Somerset tells Mills to put his gun down. Doe reveals that he himself represents envy because he envied Mills' life with Tracy, and implies the package contains her severed head. He implores Mills to become wrath, telling him that Tracy begged for her life and that of her unborn child, and takes pleasure in realizing that Mills was unaware of the pregnancy. Despite Somerset's pleas, the distraught and enraged Mills shoots Doe to death, completing his plan. As the catatonic Mills is taken away by the police, Somerset tells his captain that he will be "be around." A narration by Somerset states, "Ernest Hemingway once wrote 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part."

Cast

• Brad Pitt as David Mills: A well-meaning but impulsive homicide detective
• Morgan Freeman as William Somerset: A veteran police officer disillusioned with his job
• Gwyneth Paltrow as Tracy Mills: Detective Mills' pregnant wife
• R. Lee Ermey as Police Captain: The detectives' grizzled superior
• John C. McGinley as California: A SWAT team leader
• Kevin Spacey as John Doe: A serial killer inspired by the seven deadly sins

Seven also features Richard Roundtree as Martin Talbot, Julie Araskog as Mrs. Gould, John Cassini as Officer Davis, Reg E. Cathey, Peter Crombie, and Richard Portnow as Doctors Santiago, O'Neill, and Beardsley, Richard Schiff as Mark Swarr, and Mark Boone Junior as greasy FBI Man. Hawthorne James appears as George, the library night guard, Michael Massee portrays a "man in massage parlour booth", Leland Orser plays "Crazed Man in massage parlour", and Pamala Tyson portrays a thin vagrant outside Doe's apartment.

Doe's victims include: Bob Mack appears as Gluttony victim, a morbidly obese man force fed until his stomach bursts; Gene Borkan portrays the Greed victim, a criminal-attorney forced to cut off his own flesh; and Michael Reid MacKay appears as the Sloth victim, Theodore "Victor" Allen, a drug dealer and child abuser. Cat Mueller portrays the Lust victim, a sex worker impaled with a bladed sex toy, and Heidi Schanz appears as model Rachel Slade, the Pride victim, who is disfigured by Doe.

Production

Development

The primary influence for the film's screenplay came from Andrew Kevin Walker's time spent in New York City while trying to make it as a screenwriter. "I didn't like my time in New York, but it's true that if I hadn't lived there I probably wouldn't have written Seven." He envisioned actor William Hurt as Somerset and named the character after his favorite author, W. Somerset Maugham.

Jeremiah S. Chechik was attached to direct at one point.

The ending of the screenplay, with the head in the box, was originally part of an earlier draft that New Line had rejected, instead opting for an ending that involved more traditional elements of a detective thriller film with more action-oriented elements. But when New Line sent David Fincher the screenplay to review for his interest in the project, they accidentally sent him the original screenplay with the head-in-the-box ending. At the time, Fincher had not read a script for a year and a half since the frustrating experience of making Alien 3; he said, "I thought I'd rather die of colon cancer than do another movie". Fincher eventually agreed to direct Seven because he was drawn to the script, which he found to be a "connect-the-dots movie that delivers about inhumanity. It's psychologically violent. It implies so much, not about why you did but how you did it". He found it more a "meditation on evil" rather than a "police procedural".

When New Line realized that they had sent Fincher the wrong draft, the President of Production, Michael De Luca, met with Fincher and noted that there was internal pressure to retain the revised version; De Luca stated that if Fincher promised to direct the movie, they would be able to stay with the head-in-a-box ending. Despite this, producer Kopelson refused to allow the film to include the head-in-a-box scene.

Check on the actor Brad Pitt joined David Fincher in arguing for keeping this original scene, noting that his previous film Legends of the Fall had it's emotional ending cut after negative feedback from test audiences, and refusing to do Seven unless the head-in-the-box scene remained.

Casting

During pre-production, Al Pacino was considered for the Detective Somerset role, but he decided to do City Hall instead. Denzel Washington and Sylvester Stallone decided to turn down the role of Mills. Washington later regretted turning down the role. Robert Duvall and Gene Hackman also turned down the role of Detective Somerset. Christina Applegate turned down the role of Tracy. Ned Beatty, Val Kilmer and Michael Stipe were considered for the role of John Doe.

Trivia

David Mills

• "David Mills he has taken the shears to his flowing locks and slimmed down the frame he’d pumped up to play the godlike Tristan Ludlow in “Legends of the Fall” last year.
• “I just wanted to escape the cheese,” Pitt says, using one of his favorite expressions to describe his foray into the world of the schmaltzy romantic lead. He eases into a subtly disarming smile as he draws out the last word for emphasis. “I came to find out had a lactose intolerance as well, so I was very happy about it.”
• “I was looking for something with more of a documentary feel, more conversational and urban like ‘The Conversation’ or ‘The French Connection,’
• “I mean, the guy is kind of an idiot,” Pitt says. “The intentions are there, he just speaks before he really knows what he’s talking about.”
• Fincher says it took Pitt’s natural charm to pull off the tricky role. “I hadn’t originally thought of Brad,” he says. “I’d never seen Mills as particularly accomplished, and I was concerned that Brad seemed too together. But when I met him, I thought, this guy is so likable he can get away with murder--he can do anything and people will forgive him for it.”
• This is the role, in fact, that producer Arnold Kopelson (“The Fugitive,” “Outbreak”) says will push Pitt into the realm of serious acting. “I just came away from ‘Legends’ with a very core feeling in the pit of my stomach: This is a superstar,” says Kopelson, who cut pre-production time on “Seven” to five weeks from 12 so he could get Pitt for the role.
• He insisted also on doing the chase scenes in “Seven,” though he fell through a windshield and cut tendons and nerves in his left hand.

Tracy Mills

• “The Tracy character was so important because it’s the only sunshine we have in the film. This is the feel-bad movie of ’95,” Pitt says. “We needed someone who could take those little seconds she gets and fill them with soul, and that’s what I’d always seen in her performances--soul. She took a fantastic part and made it better.”
• In fact, he originally suggested Paltrow for the part of his wife, Tracy, in “Seven,” because he’d been impressed by her audition for “Legends of the Fall.”

Sloth

• Director David Fincher's most physically horrifying "Seven" casualty, and most memorable jump, was played by a real human. Actor Michael Reid Mackay, 5-foot-5, often hired for his slight appearance, weighed about 96 pounds during the shoot. (These days, he says, he's "a whopping" 108 pounds.)
• Prosthetic body makeup made the tortured victim appear all the more starved and the scene forever terrifying – 25 years after the film's release on Sept. 22, 1995.
• "People still think they used a dummy in that scene," says MacKay, now 67. "I get that a lot. But that was me."
• The actor was told he was basically a corpse, so he had to remain entirely still until his big moment. "So I turned slowly and stared into the camera. And they said, 'Oh, my God, that’s creepy.' It was so fast. I heard very soon afterward I had it."
• There were 11 days for experimenting and applying the extensive makeup required: skeletal teeth, skin airbrushed a deathly white with veins highlighted, fake bedsores applied everywhere, hair plastered to his head.
• Transported to the appropriately dank Los Angeles location set in full makeup, MacKay recalls Freeman spotting him and saying, "You don't look so good."
• Gluttony Played by: Bob Mack. Bagging the part: ”I went and did a reading with the casting director, but I didn’t act dead or anything. I was told the character was a very heavy guy facedown in spaghetti,” says Mack, who weighed 480 pounds at the time. ”The camera,” he jokes, ”adds 300 pounds.” Playing dead: Mack didn’t realize he would be sharing screen time with hundreds of insects until he read the call sheet. ”I was like, ‘Oh, a cockroach wrangler.”’ Mack, who bared all for the part, says, ”It’s my first film, and I’ve been Sharon Stoned.” Perks: ”Brad Pitt flicked the roaches off me between takes.”
• ”I heard they wanted a Robert Shapiro look-alike,” says Borkan. ”I didn’t know I’d be lying there dead.”Playing dead: ”Fincher wanted me to be naked, and I said, ‘I’ll be naked if you’re naked. Otherwise, you don’t get that.”’ Borkan played the part in silk underwear, hog-tied with telephone wire, doused with four quarts of fake blood. ”I insisted on closing the set, because one too many people said I was having a bad hair day,” he gripes. Perks: ”When I found out what was happening, right there and then I renegotiated. I got five times ,” says Borkan, whose resume includes parts in Philadelphia and Beverly Hills Cop. ”The best part was getting more money.”
• A drug-dealing pedophile, he is chained to his bed and starved. Bagging the part: ”It was a fast audition. They said, ‘You can stand up, sit up, or lie down, because you’re supposed to be dead.”’

Playing dead: ”They called and asked if I could lose a little more weight. I didn’t. I’m 98 pounds,” says the 5’5” MacKay. ”That’s my top weight — and I’m proud of it.” Perks: A chance for MacKay (who plays the Monopoly man in the Ace Ventura sequel) to strut his stuff; he’s the one victim found (barely) alive. ”It was a totally emotional scene — the last take I was breathing very hard and crying. It was real heavy-duty.”

• Fincher’s assistant said, ‘Cat, we’ve got this small part. You have the personality for it and definitely the body.’ I said, ‘What is it?’ and she said, ‘A dead hooker.”’ Playing dead: Lying in fake blood doesn’t pay well if you’re not in SAG: Mueller got $500 for two days’ work. ”Fincher tied me to the bed, gagged me, and poured refrigerated blood on me. I lay there for six hours…Lust on call, here.” Perks: ”Being naked in front of Brad Pitt.”
• Schanz was a last-minute replacement after another actress dropped out; to avoid delays, Fincher needed a model who already had her own pictures so they could be blown up and displayed throughout the character’s apartment.Playing dead: ”My nose was taped to one side, and then my face was wrapped with gauze. I was in a negligee in bed, doused with blood …I said, ‘David, you’re enjoying this way too much,’ and he said, ‘I have demons you can’t even imagine.”’Perks: ”Even though I’m dead, I think it’s the most glamorized murder,” says Schanz.
• McGinley remembers acting shocked and jumping away, as California "basically ejects himself" to escape the near-dead victim, a scene which Fincher shot repeatedly. MacKay insists that an unsuspecting McGinley's real shock at his first move was captured in the first take: "I did scare the (stuff) out of him."

Filming

The film was shot over a long period of 55 days. Fincher approached making Seven like a "tiny genre movie, the kind of movie Friedkin might have made after The Exorcist." He worked with cinematographer Darius Khondji and adopted a simple approach to the camerawork, which was influenced by the television show COPS, "how the camera is in the backseat peering over people's shoulder". Fincher allowed Walker on the set while filming for on-the-set rewrites. According to the director, "Seven is the first time I got to carry through certain things about the camera – and about what movies are or can be".

The crowded urban streets filled with noisy denizens and an oppressive rain that seems to fall without respite were integral parts of the film, as Fincher wanted to show a city that was "dirty, violent, polluted, often depressing. Visually and stylistically, that's how we wanted to portray this world. Everything needed to be as authentic and raw as possible." To this end, Fincher turned to production designer Arthur Max to create a dismal world that often eerily mirrors its inhabitants. "We created a setting that reflects the moral decay of the people in it", says Max. "Everything is falling apart, and nothing is working properly." The film's brooding, dark look was achieved through a chemical process called bleach bypass, wherein the silver in the film stock was not completely removed, which in turn deepened the dark, shadowy images in the film and increased its overall tonal quality.

The 'head in a box' ending continued to worry the studio after filming was completed. After the first cut of the film was shown to the studio, they attempted to mitigate the bleakness of the ending by replacing Mills' wife's head with that of a dog, or by not having Mills fire on John Doe. However, both Fincher and Pitt continued to fight for the original ending. The final scenes of Mills being taken away and Somerset's quote from Ernest Hemingway were filmed by Fincher after initial filming was complete as a way to placate the studio (the original intention was for the film to suddenly end after Mills shot John Doe).

Title sequence

Originally, Fincher planned the title sequence of the film to show Freeman's character buying a house in a remote country area and traveling back into the city. However, days before a test screening, they had yet to film the sequence and had no budget to do it in that time. Fincher approached Kyle Cooper to suggest a replacement. Cooper recognized the amount of money used to make John Doe's notebooks (created by Clive Piercy and John Sabel), and used the sequence to display them in a slideshow set to a remix of Nine Inch Nails' "Closer", created by the band Coil. The hand-drawn credits font was used to suggest that Doe had written the credits himself.

The studio liked the sequence and suggested he stay with that. Fincher instead asked Cooper to "pretend we've never met and come back and propose something else", according to Cooper. Cooper came up with a more detailed version of this photographic sequence: "The idea was that this is John Doe's job: he gets up, makes his books, plans his murders, drinks his tea." Fincher liked this approach, but cautioned Cooper, "Well, that would be neat, but that's kind of a 2D glimpse. Figure out a way for it to involve John Doe, to show that somewhere across town somebody is working on some really evil shit. I don't want it to be just flipping through pages, as beautiful as they are." Cooper reworked the idea, working with Wayne Coe to create a storyboard for a live-action shot and adding in filming along with photographs of the books, new props include film reels and additional notebooks, visual effects for the title credits, and elements inspired by Doe's behavior in the movie, such as cutting his fingertips. Fincher liked this approach, and considered getting Mark Romanek, the director of the "Closer" music video, to produce the sequence, but Cooper insisted he direct it. Cooper was assisted by film editor Angus Wall and cinematographer Harris Savides in making the final title sequence. The filming took two days and five further weeks to edit. The credits were hand-etched onto black scratchboard and manipulated by the camera, rather than using digital effects, and scroll from top to bottom, instead of the conventional bottom to top. Critics have noted that the title sequence resembles the aesthetic style of experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage.

Music

The opening credit music is a spliced sample of an uncredited remix of the Nine Inch Nails song "Closer", available as "Closer (Precursor)" (remixed by Coil). The song during the end credits is David Bowie's song "The Hearts Filthy Lesson", found on his album Outside. The film's original score is by Howard Shore. The soundtrack was released in 1995 by TVT Records in conjunction with the movie. Shore's score was finally released by the Warner Archive Collection in 2016.

1. "In the Beginning" – The Statler Brothers
2. "Guilty" – Gravity Kills
3. "Trouble Man" – Marvin Gaye
4. "Speaking of Happiness" – Gloria Lynne – written by Buddy Scott & Jimmy Radcliffe
5. "Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068 Air" – written by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by Stuttgarter Kammerorchester / Karl Münchinger
6. "Love Plus One" – Haircut One Hundred
7. "I Cover the Waterfront" – Billie Holiday
8. "Now's the Time" – Charlie Parker
9. "Straight, No Chaser" – Thelonious Monk (taken from Monk in Tokyo)
10. "Portrait of John Doe" – Howard Shore
11. "Suite from Seven" – Howard Shore

Release

Context

• Movie box office receipts and attendance reached new highs in 1994, that the average cost of making and marketing a studio picture has skyrocketed to $50.4 million, squeezing profit margins in an already-risky business.
• The average production cost last year mushroomed to $34.3 million, up 14% from 1993’s $29.9 million, based on the 168 films released by member companies of the Motion Picture Assn. of America. Advertising, marketing and print costs increased to an average of $16.1 million per film, from 1993’s $14 million.
• Valenti called the $50.4 million--the investment a movie must make just to break even--"a beast of a number.” Referring to bloated star salaries, Valenti said, “People are demanding more money for their services, so the fact is costs are going up.”
• The real growth area, he and others at the convention stressed, is the foreign marketplace, which now accounts for 41% of all revenues, including theatrical, video and television. For the first time, international theatrical revenues eclipsed domestic revenues in 1994, with the split 52% to 48%.
• But with a downturn in moviegoing in the first quarter of 1995--off about $90 million from the pace of early 1994--distributors and theater owners are hoping for an about-face this summer, with such potential big earners as “Batman 3,” “Crimson Tide” and “Pocahontas.”
• Last year set a record for blockbusters--films grossing more than $100 million at the box office, or more than $50 million in film rentals (the portion of the box office take returned to the distributor). For the first time, Valenti said, nine films reached that rental plateau in one year, with two--"Forrest Gump” and “The Lion King"--topping $100 million, theatrical attendance reached a high of 1.29 billion last year--up 5% over 1993 and the highest level since 1960’s 1.30 billion.
• Other upbeat news for the industry is that the number of people who go to the cinema once or more a year is at the highest level in five years, reaching almost 160 million, up 20% since 1989, the increased attendance is coming from the over-40 crowd, whose share of total admissions climbed to 36% from 23% in 1993 and Waterworld released, the most expensive film of its time and a significant box office failure.
• The average cost of films, including their marketing, has doubled in the last five years, reaching $50.4 million, according to the Motion Picture Association of America, the studio's lobbying arm. And, in a phenomenon familiar from corporate board rooms to baseball fields, the exploding salaries of stars and faux-stars have contributed heavily to these costs.
• Several factors have spurred the mega-salaries, including the Hollywood law of supply and demand: more movies are being churned out but the number of superstars like Harrison Ford, Jim Carrey, Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzennegger, who can actually open a film and are popular in the increasingly critical overseas markets, remains fixed. This has led to ferocious competition to snag a star, whatever the cost.
• At the same time, the demands of producing 15 or 20 movies a year have created a sense of urgency within studios. Each studio is almost compelled to roll out a big action film and a comedy each summer and winter. If Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford are unavailable -- and they usually are -- studios are at the mercy of talent agents who demand exorbitant salaries for lesser stars. plus high executive pay while paying lower stars substantaill less to cut costs.
• "It's about the star power of Brad Pitt -- you can't minimize that -- but it's also about the material and how it was cast and how the film was marketed," said Arnold Kopelson, the movie's producer. Chris Pula, president of marketing at New Line Cinema, said the advertising campaign for "Seven" was risky, designed to inform audiences that the movie was unconventional, dark and violent. "We wanted to prepare people," he said. "We wanted to make Brad and Morgan co-stars with the crimes in the film. We wanted to create word of mouth." Obviously, it worked. "Believe me," Mr. Kopelson said, "I'm no genius. I had no idea this was going to happen. In this case audiences wanted -- and got -- something they haven't seen before."

Box office

Seven was released in the United States (U.S.) and Canada on September 22, 1995. During its opening weekend, Seven earned $14 million across 2,441 theaters, an average of $5,714 per theater. This figure made it the number 1 film of the weekend, ahead of the debut of Showgirls ($8.1 million), and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything ($4.5 million), which was in its third week of release. It remained the number 1 film in its second weekend, ahead of the debuts of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers ($7.3 million) and Devil in a Blue Dress ($5.4 million), and in its third weekend ahead of the debuting Assassins ($9.4 million) and Dead Presidents ($8 million).

Seven was the number 1 film for its four weeks of release, before falling to the number 3 position in its fifth week behind the debuts of Get Shorty ($12.7 million) and Now and Then ($7.4 million), and remained in the top ten-highest-grossing films for nine weeks. In total, Seven earned about $100.1 million in the U.S. and Canada, making it the ninth-highest-grossing film of 1995, behind Casper ($100.3 million), Jumanji ($100.5 million), Goldeneye ($106.4 million), Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls ($108.4 million), Pocahontas ($141.6 million), Apollo 13 ($173.8 million), Batman Forever ($184 million), and Toy Story ($192.5 million).

Outside of the U.S. and Canada, Seven is estimated to have earned a further $227.2 million, giving it a total worldwide gross of $327.3 million, and making it the seventh-highest-grossing film worldwide, behind Apollo 13 ($335.8 million), Batman Forever ($336.5 million), Pocahontas ($347.1 million), Goldeneye ($356.4 million), Toy Story ($365.3 million), Die Hard: With a Vengeance ($366.1 million). The New York Times described Seven as an "unexpected success" that became "one of the most successful movies of the year."

Reception

Critical response

The movie, which received generally negative reviews for its violent content

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 82% based on 83 reviews, with an average rating of 7.90/10. The site's critics' consensus reads: "A brutal, relentlessly grimy shocker with taut performances, slick gore effects, and a haunting finale." At Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 65 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

Gary Arnold, in The Washington Times, praised the cast: "The film's ace in the hole is the personal appeal generated by Mr. Freeman as the mature, cerebral cop and Mr. Pitt as the young, headstrong cop. Not that the contrast is inspired or believable in itself. What gets to you is the prowess of the co-stars as they fill out sketchy character profiles." Sheila Johnston, in her review for The Independent, praised Freeman's performance: "The film belongs to Freeman and his quiet, carefully detailed portrayal of the jaded older man who learns not to give up the fight." James Charisma, in a list of Spacey's greatest film performances for Paste, wrote: "Spacey's portrayal is a perfect balancing act: John Doe is detached from the murders he commits, yet deliberate and meticulous in his execution ... Unemotional yet smug. Analytical, violent, patient, impenetrable." In his review for Sight and Sound, John Wrathall wrote, "Seven has the scariest ending since George Sluizer's original The Vanishing ... and stands as the most complex and disturbing entry in the serial killer genre since Manhunter." In his "Great Movies" list review, film critic Roger Ebert commented on Fincher's direction: "None of his films is darker than this one."

The scholar Jeremy Tambling examined the film as an example of allegory.

Accolades

New Line Cinema re-released Seven in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, on Christmas Day and in New York City on December 29, 1995, in an attempt to generate Academy Award nominations for Freeman, Pitt, and Fincher, which was ultimately unsuccessful.

American Film Institute recognition

2003: AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains

• John Doe – Nominated Villain

Post release

Home media

For the DVD release, Seven was remastered and presented in the widescreen format, preserving the 2.40:1 aspect ratio of its original theatrical exhibition. Audio options include Dolby Digital EX 5.1, DTS ES Discrete 6.1, and Stereo Surround Sound.

The Seven DVD features four newly-recorded, feature-length audio commentaries featuring the stars, director, and other key contributors to the film, who talk about their experiences making Seven. Disc one features a printable screenplay with links to the film.

A Blu-ray version of the film was released on September 14, 2010 by Warner Home Video and retained nearly all of the special features from the DVD.

Novelization and comic books

In 1995, a novelization with the same title was written by Anthony Bruno based on the original film.

Between September 2006 and October 2007, a series of seven comic books were published by Zenescope Entertainment with each of the seven issues dedicated to one of the seven sins. It told the story from the perspective of John Doe rather than the two homicide detectives as in the film, and gave Doe a backstory. Each issue included contributions by a group of creators independent of each other. All seven issues were collected in trade paperback form, released on January 15, 2008, as SE7EN, edited by David Seidman and Ralph Tedesco.

Legacy

• Recently, he’s been spending most of his free time with Paltrow, his co-star in “Seven,” with whom he’s become romantically involved.
• MacKay still receives healthy residual payments for his "Seven" role and considers it a career highpoint. "I’m pretty proud of it. I think I was pretty cool," he says. There are also the rare "Seven" star sightings. "Four years ago, I was in Ralphs (supermarket), walking down the aisle. And this guy said, 'Sir, I loved in you in 'Seven,' " MacKay recalls. "And I was like, 'How did you know it was me? I was a corpse for God's sake.'

References

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2. ^ "Seven (1995)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved July 17, 2014.
3. "Se7en (1995)". Retrieved August 9, 2020.
4. ^ Hruska, Bronwen (September 17, 1995). "Movies : Don't Call Him Sexy : Ok, Brad Pitt Has An Undeniable Smoldering Presence That's Fueling His White-Hot Career. But He Doesn't Want To Talk About That Cheesy Stuff. Honest". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on August 2, 2021. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
5. Gaughan, Liam (September 14, 2021). "Ranking Morgan Freeman's 20 Best Roles". /Film. Archived from the original on September 2, 2022. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
6. ^ Mirjalili, Fatemeh (May 17, 2022). "Brad Pitt Did Everything In His Power To Keep Seven's Ending Intact". /Film. Archived from the original on September 2, 2022. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
7. Wenzel, Zac (August 3, 2022). "R. Lee Ermey's Best Performances, Ranked". MovieWeb. Archived from the original on September 11, 2022. Retrieved September 11, 2022.
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Further reading

• Dyer, Richard (1999). Seven. London: British Film Institute. ISBN 978-0-85170-723-5.

External links

• Seven at IMDb
• Seven at the TCM Movie Database
• Template:Amg movie
• Seven at Box Office Mojo
• Seven at Rotten Tomatoes
• Seven at Metacritic
• Seven at Letterboxd

• 1995 films
• 1995 drama films
• 1995 crime drama films
• 1995 crime thriller films
• 1995 independent films
• 1990s chase films
• 1990s English-language films
• 1990s police films
• 1990s serial killer films
• 1990s thriller drama films
• American chase films
• American crime drama films
• American crime thriller films
• American independent films
• American neo-noir films
• American police detective films
• American serial killer films
• American thriller drama films
• Films about murder
• Films about religion
• Films directed by David Fincher
• Films produced by Arnold Kopelson
• Films scored by Howard Shore
• Films shot in California
• Films with screenplays by Andrew Kevin Walker
• New Line Cinema films
• Seven deadly sins in popular culture
• 1990s American films