This ain't a seven: it's got to be at least an eight or a nine.

Rating: 9/10 (11 February 2012)

I consider David Fincher's Seven to be a precursor/forerunner of the 'torture porn' phenomenon—more specifically, the Saw movies: it utilises the grunge aesthetic that has become synonymous with such films, features a self-righteous villain who delights in playing gruesome games, revels in the extreme nature of its victims' suffering, and delivers an uncompromising and rather preposterous finale that is designed to hit like a kick to the gut.
However, despite being the impetus for what has become one the most over-saturated and tiresome of sub-genres (as well as that irritating trend of replacing letters in a title with numbers), I don't resent Fincher's film one bit: it's just too good to hold a grudge against—a masterpiece of the macabre that admittedly requires a little suspension of disbelief to be truly effective, but which is so well crafted and so horrific that to do so is both easy and worthwhile.
Fincher is able to successfully brush off the debacle that was Alien 3 and prove himself to be the accomplished movie-maker that many suspected him to be. Without studio interference, he successfully delivers his vision—a visually stunning chiller that delivers thrills, chills, grisly horror aplenty, without resorting to cheap scares or overtly explicit gore. Despite its gruesome subject matter, Se7en doesn't rely on relentless splatter to shock: the mere suggestion of what has occurred possesses the power to repel, with brief glimpses of the murder victims' corpses offering just enough grisly detail to satisfy the viewer's morbid curiosity.
An ingenious script from Andrew Kevin Walker, impeccable performances from its amazing cast (including a particularly outstanding performance from Kevin Spacey), and what what has to be one of most harrowing and unsettling endings in cinema, all adds up to one hell of a fine movie.