Se7en (1995) Movie Review & Full Plot Breakdown
On Sunday, Detective William arrives at a crime scene and meets Detective David, who was just transferred. The dead body belongs to a man who was shot down. Neighbors heard him argue with his wife for two hours so the cops think it was a crime of passion. On their way out, William reveals he's retiring soon and wonders why David fought so hard to be reassigned to his lame unit.
David just says he wants to do some good and William reminds him that for the next 7 days, he's still in charge. On Monday morning, David wakes up next to his wife Tracy, who gets annoyed when the phone rings. David is called to another crime scene where he meets with William again. When David wonders if the victim is really dead, the cop who found the body gets angry and William scolds David for being condescending. The detectives search the house and find cockroaches all over the floor.
The victim is dead at the table with his face on a plate of spaghetti. His hands and feet are tied, and under the table there's a bucket full of puke. David keeps making dumb comments so William sends him to talk to the neighbors. Later in the car, David reminds William that he already has a career in the homicide department so he shouldn't be doing grunt work. At the morgue, four people are needed to push the victim's huge body onto the table.
The doctor explains that the man ate until he hemorrhaged internally, there are also some bruises on his head but he hasn't been able to tell what. William theorizes that the man had a gun pressed to the back of his head. Afterward William goes to the police station and shares the case details with the captain. After 12 hours of eating the killer kicked the man, which caused his insides to burst. This is a lot of work to kill someone, so William thinks the criminal put meaning into this and may be a serial killer.
William requests to be reassigned because he doesn't want his last case to be a crazy one. He also points out that this is too soon for David, who gets angry and offended. The captain refuses to reassign William but he does put David on another case. On Tuesday, a defense attorney is found murdered. While the district attorney tries to calm down the press, David makes it to the crime scene. A big bloodstain on the carpet spells the word greed and the blood was also used to draw glasses on the picture of a woman.
At the police station, the captain tells William about the dead attorney. He also leaves him a bottle full of little plastic pieces that were found in the big man's belly. Apparently they were fed to him. William returns to the crime scene and opens the fridge, only to find strange holes on the floor. The plastic pieces from the stomach fit in the holes, so William slides the fridge back into place and behind it he finds the word GLUTTONY written in grease on the wall. There's also a note with a quote from Paradise Lost that means this has just started.
Then William takes everything back to the station and theorizes that the serial killer is doing the seven deadly sins. The big guy was first with gluttony, and the attorney was the second one with greed, which means they'll get one murder a day until the week ends. William leaves the station saying that David can have the whole case. In the evening, William goes to the library to study many classic books like The Canterbury Tales and The Divine Comedy.
He photocopies a bunch of pages and makes a reading list, which he leaves in an envelope on David's desk. Meanwhile, David keeps studying the details of both crime scenes. On Wednesday, David is too frustrated at William's choice of difficult books, so an officer brings him the CliffsNotes version of the texts. Later at the station, David discovers that he must share an office with William.
When Tracy calls, she forces David to pass the phone to William so she can invite him to dinner. That night William visits the young couple and can't help laughing when the whole house shakes because of the passing train. After dinner the guys discuss the case. David believes that the killer sneaked in on Friday and was able to torture the attorney all weekend.
The victim had to cut a pound of flesh with a knife and weigh it on a scale. There was also a note with a quote from the merchant of Venice. The flesh came from the attorney's stomach so he bled to death. William wonders if the killer is preaching. Then David shows him the picture with the blood glasses. This woman is Gould's wife, who has already been sent to a safehouse. A confused William concludes there's something she didn't see but she's supposed to. The detectives decide to visit the wife and show her the pictures of the crime scene to see if she notices anything peculiar.
The woman points out that a painting on the wall is upside down. The duo rushes to the crime scene and takes the painting from the wall, only to get frustrated because there's nothing behind it. However William uses a brush on the wall and finds some fingerprints. Moments later the print lab uses their devices to uncover the whole message, which turns out to be a bunch of fingerprints forming the words help me.
They're not the victim's prints so they run them through the computer, but there's no match. On Thursday, the police discover that the prints belong to a guy named Victor, who was raised Southern Baptist, has a history of mental illness, and a long criminal record. All the cops leave the station to go after Victor, but William doesn't think he's the right guy. Minutes later the team is bursting into Victor's building, which isn't in the best state.
They kick down the door and search the apartment, which is terribly dirty. On the ceiling, dozens of pine tree air fresheners are hung to deal with the smell. In the bedroom they find a shape in the bed, so they move the sheets to discover Victor's dead body. Its skeletal state says it's been dead for a while. On the wall there's the word sloth above the bed. David finds a box of photos documenting the guy's decay over a year. When a cop gets close to the body to tell him he got what he deserved, Victor suddenly wakes up coughing because he's actually alive.
After the ambulance takes the guy away, a reporter enters the building and takes a picture of the detectives. David snaps and throws the camera while yelling at the reporter until he's gone. Later at the hospital a doctor confirms that Victor hasn't moved for a year, so he has muscle and spine deterioration. There are tons of medicines in his system, his brain is mush, and he has no tongue, so they won't get to interrogate him.
In the evening Tracy calls William, explaining she needs someone to talk to and he's the only person she knows in the city. On Friday morning, Tracy and William meet at a diner. She explains she hates living here but doesn't want to tell David because it would mess with his career. Tracy also announces that she's pregnant. William shares that the one time he knocked up a woman she terminated the pregnancy. However Tracy explains she does want to have children, she just doesn't want to raise them in the city. Then William advises her not to tell David until she decides if she's keeping the baby, and Tracy cries.
Afterward William goes to work. He stares at the clues with David, who thinks the killer is a nutbag. However William thinks this work comes from a very methodical person. He drags David to the library and makes a new list of books that talk about the seven deadly sins. For lunch they go to a pizza parlor and William pays a guy under the table to do something very risky.
At first William doesn't want to explain himself so David bothers him until he confesses. The man had been an FBI agent who has access to the library system, so he'll search for a person that took out books on the list. An hour later they get a report. It reveals that all the books related to the subject were borrowed by someone called John Doe, which is obviously a fake name.
The detectives go to the address on the library card and knock on the door. Suddenly John Doe appears in the corridor and as soon as he sees them, he opens fire. The detectives drop to the floor to avoid getting shot and John runs away. David rushes downstairs to follow him and has to dodge a few more shots. While he hears children's voices yelling, David continues to search the floor and sends all curious civilians back to their places. Suddenly he sees a screaming woman running out of her apartment so he rushes inside, but after searching all the rooms he discovers that John escaped through the window.
When David looks out, John opens fire at him from an alley and uses the distraction to run again. A furious David also climbs through the window and runs on the roof while noticing that John is entering an abandoned building. By breaking a window, David manages to get inside too and notices that John is leaving a trail of blood behind him, meaning he's injured. The chase continues but after running through several corridors, John uses the fire escape to leave the building again. He crosses the street in a hurry and causes various cars to crash on the sidewalk while he hides in an alley.
Then David also uses the fire escape to get out, landing on a pile of trash. He runs to the alley and finds a truck. David carefully looks around it, however John is on top of the truck and knocks him down by hitting him from above. Next he grabs David's gun and gets ready to shoot him in the head, but at that moment William appears and John runs away. Afterward David tries to get into the apartment and William reminds him that they don't have a warrant.
An argument ensues and David calms down, but he's only acting so he can kick down the door. To save the situation, the detectives pay a neighbor to make her tell the police that she called them because someone in that apartment had been acting suspicious and creepy. Now they can search John Doe's place, which is horrifying. They find a box with dangerous tools, a neon cross on the wall, a drawer full of medicine next to the Bible, and cabinets with souvenirs from the murders.
There's also a picture of a woman in a fur coat. William finds a bunch of notebooks with the killer's insane ramblings. In a hidden room, David discovers pictures of all the victims while they were being killed. He also finds the pictures taken by the reporter in a tub, which means they talked to the killer that day without knowing. Later the forensic team finds a box of money and a bill, but not a single fingerprint in the whole apartment.
William reads the notebooks for clues but they don't have any dates to match them to the murders. At that moment the phone rings and David picks it up. It's John Doe, who says that he admires David but he can't say more because it'd ruin the surprise. Then the duo keeps reading the notebooks and confirms that John is preaching. They think the woman from the picture is their next clue. On Saturday, the detectives go to the address on the bill, which turns out to be a leather shop. The owner explains that John made a custom order and gives them a picture of the product.
Suddenly their beepers ring with an alert that the woman from the picture has been found. The duo rushes to a club and in the basement, the working lady from the photo is dead on the bed with the word lust carved on the door. A man wearing a bedsheet is on the floor screaming at the site. Later at the station, David interrogates the club's owner, but he didn't see anything strange. William interrogates the bedsheet man and shows him the picture of the product John ordered, a codpiece with a knife on its groin.
The guy explains that John put a gun in his mouth to force him to wear the codpiece while doing the dirty with the working lady, which obviously killed her. When David gets home, he makes sure to tell Tracy that he loves her. William is annoyed by his metronome and throws it across the room. Since he can't sleep, he keeps throwing a knife at his dartboard with perfect aim.
On Sunday, 911 gets a call from John saying he did it again. Moments later the cops find a woman dead in bed with the word pride painted on the wall with her blood. A bottle of sedatives and a phone have been glued to her hands. It seems John sliced up her face to cut off her nose and bandaged her before giving her a choice, call for help and live with a disfigured face, or use the sedatives to self-delete. The woman's pride made her choose the sedatives. At the station, William tells David that he isn't retiring until they close this case.
Suddenly John Doe enters the station covered in blood and yells to be noticed. David takes out his gun and the cops surround him to handcuff him while he asks for a lawyer. Then they try to take his fingerprints, but he doesn't have any because the skin was cut off. William and David don't think John would give up so easily and suspect a trap. A lawyer talks to John and tries to make a deal with the cops. He explains that there are two more bodies hidden away but John will only take David and William to the spots. The police don't want to take the deal, however John will plead insanity if they don't. If they take the deal, he'll plead guilty.
William wonders if the bodies are real, so the district attorney shares the lab results, which confirm that the blood on John's clothes belongs to two new victims. The detectives have no choice but to take the deal. They shave their chests so microphones can be taped on them. While the captain deals with the press, the duo leaves with John in a car and a police helicopter follows them.
During the trip, the detectives try to learn more about John, but he refuses to talk about himself and only says he must finish his work because it's special. William pokes at his religious logic and makes him rant. John explains he didn't kill any innocent people, all his victims were criminals just for falling for one of the big sins, even if it was just being overweight. He also keeps taunting David, which makes him angrier by the second. Eventually John asks the detectives to stop the car in the middle of an open field full of electrical towers. After checking on the time, John begins guiding the cops through the field.
At that moment a van appears on the road, so William runs to intercept it while David stays with John. William drives as fast as possible to block the road and takes out his gun, causing a man to get out of the van. It's just a terrified delivery guy who was hired to bring a package for David. After checking he isn't armed, William lets him run away and asks his team to send someone to pick the man up. Then William opens the box and is incredibly shocked by its contents, announcing that John has the upper hand.
Meanwhile John tells David that he admires him and that he paid a cop to get information about him. He reveals that he's visited Tracy and cut off her head because he envied David's normal life. This means envy is his sin, so John asks David to shoot and become wrath. William rushes to calm David down, but he refuses to say what is in the box and that confirms that Tracy's head is in it. John doesn't stop taunting David and tells him that Tracy was pregnant, so William slaps him. Hearing about the baby is the last thing David needs to snap.
He shoots John in the head and then his body five more times. In the evening, David is taken away by the police for his crime. And William finally leaves the force.
