What struck me as a heinous thriller in 1995 now seems – in the wake of a rash of explicit, torture-driven horror flicks – like something that verges on restraint. Then again, maybe this is just a demonstration of how subtle chills are more effective in the end. The details of the serial killer’s crimes – based on the seven deadly sins – are mostly alluded to, so that your imagination fills in the blanks more horrifyingly than any screenwriter could. (In comparison, the graphic gore of the Saw films and their ilk can be kicked from your consciousness like dirt from a boot.) Of course, Seven also had director David Fincher, who lends every scene of his breakout film a foreboding sense of rot. Morgan Freeman is the veteran nihilist cop, while a cocksure Brad Pitt is the rookie idealist. The film’s most perverse twist is the way Pitt’s young gun – the hero of any other thriller – gets, well, somebody’s head handed to him in the end.
