Se7en - Thriller

Directed by David Fincher, se7en was released in 1995 starring Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt.

Se7en is a film about two homicide detectives’ desperate hunt for a serial killer who justifies his crimes as a solution to the world’s ignorance of the seven deadly sins. The movie takes the viewer from the tortured remains of one victim to the next as sociopath ‘John Doe’ sermonises to detectives Sommerset (Morgan Freeman) and Mills (Brad Pitt) – one sin at a time.

Se7en was produced on an estimated budget of $30,000,000, and grossed $100,125,000 in the USA.



Se7en from Kaiser on Vimeo.

Camera angles

The opening scene starts off with an extreme close up on a book; the book has pages and pictures sewn on it with writing all over the place, all hand written. At the same time, the titles are ‘scratched’ on screen and are jumpy.

Throughout the opening scene, the camera angles are predominantly high angle close ups of objects such as books and items on the table, which shows dominance or the point of view of the character.

Mise en scene

The opening scene takes place in a basement type room. Around the room are several book shelves, neatly lined up with books, many pieces of paper lying around with writing all over them. On the table is an open book, filled with small handwriting and pictures of children. Certain words that are related to the seven deadly sins such as ‘sex’ and ‘lust’ have been crossed out. Alongside the book, on the table are other objects such as needles and blades. This suggests the character is mentally unstable, suicidal or has an unbalanced mindset even.

Sound & editing

As the scene opens and titles appear on screen, non diegetic rock music is being played. Together with the music, grinding materials such as chainsaws etc can be heard. The tempo, speed and the volume of the music rises and then falls again; this suggests that the characters mindset is unstable.

Diegetic sounds of thunder and rain can be heard though the audience cannot see because of lack of windows and natural light.

Much of the scene is distorted, jumpy and off focus, this can either represent the characters point of view or can represent his mindset.

There are also a lot of jump cuts throughout the scene, this suggests the character possible has too much on his mind and is finding it difficult to focus on just one thing.