Se7en (1995)

Somerset's intellectualised pseudo-stoicism looks eerily familiar from the vantage point of 2025. But assuming that Se7en is indeed a resounding argument against his philosophy of apathy (in that it demonstrates that it is "a moral failure to disguise indifference as a rational philosophy for the purpose of private contentment because of the harm to everyone else") it makes the film much more of a 1990s text — like Schindler's List (1993), it could be cited as an argument for liberal intervention overseas.

Such films [as Seven] legitimize our passivity as consumers and as citizens, and we can soak in our pessimism as if it were a warm bath, fondle our sour apathy as if it were a form of higher wisdom. To call our current state the decline of civilization sounds a lot grander than to see it as the erosion of a few Western power bases (whose erosion might actually benefit the world at large) or as the result of a decline in government services.

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The long-term absence of new thinking in commercial filmmaking [above] all reflects a rigid business policy to exploit existing markets to the limit rather than develop any new ones, which would require risk and creativity. One of those overworked genres sees urban blight as the occasion for a detached euphoria linked to metaphysical fatalism. The trick is to make it feel like a fresh idea, a trick that Seven pulls off remarkably well.

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The credits [introduce] us to some of the belongings and activities of the not-yet-introduced serial killer — or are they the materials and activities of the police who are investigating the killer much later in the picture? Our uncertainty about this seems pivotal rather than incidental: the links between art making, murder, and murder investigation are what matter.

— Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader)

Christopher Nolan shares [a] world of masculine darkness with Fincher and the immense popularity of both directors suggests the unfulfilled thirst for negativity in the culture. Yet while Nolan’s yarns spool out in the endless maze of individual trauma—some controlling incident from the past has locked in character and narrative, dissolving time into a Möbius strip—Fincher’s tales categorically reject individual biography as a sufficient cause for the sheer volume of male sociopaths running amok.

— J. M. Tyree (Film Quarterly)

In classic crime fiction [order] and security have been restored to the world, a demonstration that such restoration is always possible. Yet the whole construction of Seven, above all its unending gloom and murmur, suggests that such rigorous closure has made no difference whatsoever to a world that was never ordered and secure to begin with.

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The foundational sin of humanity, in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, is the desire to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. Even if such an allusion is not being mobilised, Seven certainly draws on an awareness of how much watching thrillers is about knowing — detecting but also seeing — nasty things.

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Some people, when they learnt that I was writing about Seven, said that they had not been able to bring themselves to see it, to which I replied that they need not have worried since you don't see anything.

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[Tracy's death is] comparable to the death of Cordelia in King Lear. Another embodiment of goodness, also rather underdeveloped in the writing, who, just when you expect deliverance, is announced dead. Both cases are devastating for what they mean, but this is located in the man's suffering and his loss of a male fantasy of domestic repose.

— Richard Dyer: BFI Film Classics: Seven (2024)

Somerset’s hatred of lax American morality finds its voice in John Doe [who] has his revenge on corrupt society by committing murders based on the seven deadly sins. Doe not only reflects the detective’s diehard moralism but also mirrors his erudition: Somerset matches the killer quote for quote as he rampages across the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton with the lost values of culture inextricably linked with the lost values of community.

— Travis MacKenzie Hoover (Reverse Shot)

Se7en unfolds in seven days, and its purpose is ruthless in that it is not interested in changing Somerset in time to save David Mills; on the contrary, it is designed so that transformation of Somerset is contingent upon the sacrifice of its likeable characters. [Indeed,] a common misunderstanding is that John Doe and David Mills are the mirrored characters in Se7en. When it is understood that John Doe and William Somerset are in fact the mirrored characters, confusion regarding what the authority of the film endeavors to prove about Somerset’s beliefs is more easily resolved. [And] although we may empathize with Somerset’s humility and despair, is this a sound basis for adopting and perpetuating a philosophy? Individuals spellbound by Somerset may be enraptured not by his beliefs but his presence and aptitudes. He produces valuable results when pressured to do so, most notably dislodging the identity of the killer. What is under scrutiny is not his skillfulness but a philosophy that undermines its usefulness, and a core belief that serves neither him, his partner, Tracy, nor the other victims of John Doe. [Moreover,] who other than Mills can be said to be responsible for Somerset’s change? John Doe? Certainly not. For William Somerset, John Doe is nothing more than the physical manifestation of the degeneration that he already presumes to be the intrinsic nature of humankind. [In conclusion,] Se7en argues that it is a moral failure to disguise indifference as a rational philosophy for the purpose of private contentment because of the harm to everyone else [—] once suffering is recognized by an individual in a position to assuage it, neutrality as a personal refuge is morally untenable.

— Michael Crowley (Slant Magazine)

Mr. Freeman moves sagely through "Seven" with the air of one who has seen it all and will surely be seeing something better very soon. His performance has just the kind of polish and self-possession that his co-star, Mr. Pitt, seems determined to avoid. Demonstrating an eighth sin by frittering away an enormously promising career, Mr. Pitt walks through this film looking rumpled and nonchalant, mumbling his lines with hip diffidence to spare. He remains too detached to show much enthusiasm, except for times when the screenplay begins moralizing about what a sick world we live in.

— Janet Maslin (The New York Times, 1995)

Unlike in Blade Runner, the rain in Se7en does not function as a "simulation of the real." In Blade Runner, the rain, like everything else in the film, seems artificial, while at the same time evoking nostalgia for noir films. Se7en moves, by contrast, beyond such pastiche, as the rain provokes a similar affect to the shallow focus and processing of the film stock in that it prevents the viewer from being able to see into the depth of the image, while evoking the feeling that there is something potentially violent behind the sheets of water that drench the images of protagonists and city.

— Paul Gormley (Angelaki, 2001)

Night Must Fall’s [(1937)] business about the hatbox—never opened during the runtime, but strongly implied to contain the head of Danny’s latest victim—anticipates Seven by decades.

— Farran Smith Nehme