Brad Pitt admirably carries this big-budget zombie apocalypse flick that has more in common with Outbreak or Contagion than it does your standard zombie fare — don’t expect blood and gore, horror fans. Director Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball, Stranger Than Fiction) succeeds in ratcheting up the tension with a script (based very loosely on Max Brooks’ book) that is essentially one dramatic escape sequence after another.
Director David Fincher rebounded from Alien 3 with this seemingly innocuous serial killer flick penned by Andrew Kevin Walker. We’d seen buddy cop flicks and killers with gitchy modus operandis before, but characterization and style put Se7en over the edge. It’s a deeply creepy and unsettling movie centering around a seasoned detective (Morgan Freeman) and a rookie (Brad Pitt) who are paired in pursuit of a mysterious killer who’s patterning his murders after the seven deadly sins. Talk about your horror set-pieces. The scene where the detectives discover ‘Sloth’ contains one of the most memorable shocks I’ve ever experienced at the movies, and the way in which ‘Lust’ is played out also haunts my memories. Freeman and Pitt’s performances keep the story well grounded and relatable, while composer Howard Shore washes the movie in a brooding orchestral score that reinforces the film’s constantly claustrophobic atmosphere.
