Se7en
Seven is a foundational text for me. I borrowed it on VHS from someone in school in my Junior Cert year (1998 I think) and took it home on a Wednesday where we had a half day every week. Watched it before my parents got home. Absolutely floored by the ending. Still holds up. It’s become comfort food now, grim, horrifying comfort food.
Visually it remains incredible. The constant rain to the baking desert. John Doe’s apartment is a top tier supervillain lair. The relationship between Mills and Somerset is, well I won’t say subtle because even I noticed its evolution, but it’s believable and well done. They could both be at risk of being a classic archetype - the young hotshot ready to make his mark, the grizzled veteran who’s numb from seeing it all - but they both get pulled towards the centre. Mills getting the Cliffs Notes of the Divine Comedy but actually learning something from it. The vibrating apartment. Somerset cares, ultimately, and Mills is way over his head. Consider the first time they’re working together, the gluttony murder. Mills is spilling some anecdote, Somerset tells him to shut up and get out. Later, we’re in the car on the way to the sloth scene. Mills is again telling an anecdote about a cop who got shot, and Somerset is interested, asking questions. Then at the end, they’re shaving their chests before getting wired up to go out into the desert, bantering away. Makes the ending all the more powerful. Gwyneth even gets a good scene confessing her pregnancy and fears to Somerset, who says he’s not qualified for this before telling an anecdote where he’s in a completely identical situation and gives her perfect advice.
The murders themselves are all nightmares. Every single person watching for the first time jumped out of their skin when the sloth guy coughed. The razor dildo suit just got edited out every time the movie was on TV, rendering the lust murder completely incomprehensible. Pride took up about five seconds of screen time, they had to get one more in before getting to the business end. They even just had John Doe call the emergency number to say, hey, I did another murder, go check it out.
The library bit bothers me. It hearkens back to an ideal time where the government couldn’t just look at your library records and didn’t (probably) have real time video of everything you’re doing at any given moment. But why would John Doe take all these books out of the library? Just buy them dude. You can get a second hand Paradise Lost for next to nothing. It’s not even like the murder scenes are stuffed with obscure references to literature either. He left one Milton quote at the gluttony murder, but it’s not like the inner layer of the Inferno had Judas being force-fed soup and kicked in the stomach. Really the only thing he needed to know were the names of the actual sins, freestyling from that probably would have produced the same result.
Anyway, the ending still rules. It’s sad that you have to kind of hold in your head Kevin Spacey being a sex pest, because from the moment he steps out of that taxi, it’s pure gold. Before I die I will walk into a police station and yell DETECTIVE! This may turn out to be immediately before I die. The conversation in the car, I noticed how every time someone caught him in an inconsistency - you’re punishing murderers, but aren’t you a murderer, I seem to remember knocking on your door - he changes the subject. From there, well, John Doe has the upper hand. What’s in the box?