Se7en vs Zodiac

Totally agreed; Zodiac was an engrossing, superbly-blended mixture of procedural details and serial suspense, while Se7en is one of the biggest examples of a movie I feel is pretty good, but I still feel like I don't really like it because so many people insist it's one of the "GOAT" films. Don't get me wrong, it is good for me, but that's it, and while it potentially has the style of a great film, it doesn't have the substance of one, and I just wasn't engaged by it enough for it to be a favorite of mine. Plus, the combination of the super grim, dark tone and the uber-gimmicky premise is an uneasy mix, and makes it feel like an unintentional parody of a post-Silence Of The Lambs serial thriller, sort of like watching a feature length version of this skit:



Also, it helped popularized that awful trend in Hollywood of replacing letters with numbers in movie titles, so that's another knock against it.

Bro, the Zodiac killer was real.


You should have known going in that the killer wouldn't be conclusively identified lol.

Couldn't have said it better.

Se7en has also tighter storyline and better pacing, and it has aged better than Fight Club too.

Only thing i don't agree is that it's weaker than Memories of a murder, because it's a much better film for that.

Yeah, Fight Club hasn't aged that well. I think it's lost a lot of its luster because it greatly depended on its twist.

Se7en was an already very good film, but the ending elevated it to classic status.

Fight Club was just a decent movie without the twist.

I see a lot of criticism towards it, on other boards.

I mean, it's still a liked film but i have seen it losing to Terminator 2, Inception, Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas and many other films.

I agree that Se7en's sharp pacing and iconic ending has aged well.

Zodiac isn't bad though. It's a very good film but it's damn long and you need to focus on details once you know where the story go.

I think Fight Club was easily one of the 10 best films of 1999.

It falls well short of the 10 best of the 90s, at least imo.

I have Se7en as a top 10 of the 90s.

I only got it below Shawshank and T2.

I'd rate Zodiac above Social Network anyways.

I think Zodiac is Fincher's second best film, so yes, I'd put it above Social Network also.

Is it my second favorite Fincher movie to watch? No.

I'd rather rewatch Panic Room, The Game, or Girl with the Dragon Tattoo than Zodiac. But I can't objectively say those three are as good as Zodiac.

Yeah, it's not really an easy watch.

I'll made an example: Zodiac would be "Memento" and Fight Club would be "Inception" in terms of rewatchability, even though for many the latter is better or more mature in content and directing.

The Game has some flaws in the storyline, but it's a crazy ride though. I really like that flick, much more than Mank or Ben Button.

Problem is that I revisited Se7en not too long ago and, for all the craft that Fincher et al bring to the proceedings, I'm no longer so convinced that it's a particularly deep film. I just remember the scene with John Doe declaring that people would puzzle over his "masterpiece" for years to come and it hit me that, well over a decade since I first saw the film, there wasn't that much to puzzle over regarding not just what his crimes meant in and of themselves but how they affected the film's other characters. In comparison, the subtext of Fight Club has only continued to endure in ways that bolster the film's already-considerable quality as it ultimately revolves around disaffected men being drawn to fascism and terrorism via a seemingly benign disagreement with vapid consumerism (it's actually about ethics in game journalism). Still, it is interesting to think of Se7en in conjunction with Fight Club since they are both essentially films about an extremist growing disgusted with the world and enacting a plan to change it that are shown from different perspectives.

As for Zodiac, I'll reserve judgment until I revisit it but I won't be surprised if it ends up getting the edge over Se7en.

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I knew that, bro; part of the subversion lies in the decision to make the film in the first place at all, since they knew going into it that, unless they omitted certain pieces of evidence that seemed to point away from Allen, or over-embellished the facts of the case to make him seem more guilty, they were never going to be able to resolve the identity of "the Zodiac" (but obviously, to their credit, they made the film anyway). It'd be like if Kathryn Bigelow had gone ahead and made Zero Dark Thirty before bin Laden had been killed, so instead of that film climaxing with the conclusive raid sequence, it instead ended with... who knows? That's the kind of challenge that Fincher faced with Zodiac, so, again, how is a murder mystery never identifying the identity of the murderer not subversive?

I do love them both just the definitiveness of Seven's ending wins it for me. I want to know who the damn Zodiac killer is! Also "What's in the box" still haunts me to this day.