‘Se7en’ 4K UHD (review)

As 2025 slowly finds its feet, one of the first modern classics to have an anniversary highlighted is David Fincher’s sophomore film directing effort Se7en, celebrating its 30th anniversary with a new restoration and theatrical re-release.

With only music videos and the tumultuous studio inference hell of ALIEN³ under his belt at the time, the director still needed to prove himself, and with 1995’s Se7en, Fincher left an indelible mark on the world of cinema, which not only attested to his merit as a filmmaker, but also ensured that he would be considered one of the most notable directors to debut during the decade, going on to direct both The Game and Fight Club before the turn of the millennium.

Se7en follows veteran detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and rookie Mills (Brad Pitt), the odd pair investigating a series of revolting murders, all of them pointing toward a serial killer obsessed with the seven deadly sins.

Set in an unnamed city plagued by crime, what ensues is a deeply nihilistic tale of some of the most depraved murders ever dreamt up for mainstream cinema, the depravity of the murders only rivaled by the irredeemable inhumanity of the killer responsible.

As the film progresses, the stakes and brutality escalate, something that enthralled audiences and critics alike at the time, as a film being as despairingly dark and relentlessly brutal without becoming exploitatively cheap in the process was a rarity, and few films have indeed come close to capturing this delicate balance since.

What worked particularly well in Se7en was how Fincher managed to marry atmosphere with mystery, and how he created a sense of abject horror as a result.

The setting of a dirty metropolis besieged by seemingly endless rain is evocative enough on its own, but the way the crime scenes were filmed was what elevated the unease to another level.

Rather than relying on the shock factor of the grotesque nature of the crimes in and of themselves, the way the crime scenes were lit and filmed eschewed dwelling on the gratuity of the violence, focusing instead on the reactions of the detectives and anyone unfortunate enough to have encountered the killer and lived to tell the harrowing tale of what he made them do.

By putting the emphasis on the emotional impact of the horrific crime scenes and dancing around the gruesome crimes themselves with unsettling lighting in nightmarish hellholes that exist just out of plain sight, Fincher masterfully left the audience to reckon with the most unsettling thing of all, namely their own imaginations.

The diabolical horror of the murders was galvanized by the juxtaposition of the mundanity of the procedural nature of investigative police work and relatable everyday qualms of the protagonists.

As Somerset and Mills Hunt a demon, demons of their own lurk beneath the surface of the hot-headed Mills’ in particular, something that becomes instrumental in stirring the pot of character complexity, as the film’s infamous ending turned the tables on the protagonists in a way so shocking it lives on in pop culture canon to this day.

Due to the success of Se7en’s intricate mix of an enigmatic series of crimes, engaging character arcs, and the unabashed grittiness of the film as a whole, the late 90s and early 2000s saw an onslaught of similarly grimy crime thrillers, and the style of Se7en continues to inspire to this day, Matt Reeves’ 2022 effort The Batman being one of the most recent examples, as it clearly took several pages out of Se7en’s book by paraphrasing the Fincher classic in terms of both narrative and visual style.

Nothing has ever come close to the original, though, and while Fincher has certainly continued to make compelling and critically acclaimed films in the decades since, Se7en remains some of his very finest work.

The new 4K restoration is stunning, but several small CGI tweaks overseen by Fincher keep if from perfection. Special features include four commentaries, deleted scenes, alternate endings, featurettes, still galleries, and theatrical EPK.

Verdict: 10 out of 10.