SEVEN (1995)

This homicide thriller has a tantalizingly morbid atmosphere of unease. In a rainy, anonymous nowhere city, a serial killer is slaughtering people according to a fiendish pattern: one murder for each of the seven deadly sins. The movie's perverse hook is the gruesomely clever way in which the style of each murder mirrors the sin. The premise is actually rather corny -- it's like something out of a Clive Barker potboiler -- but director David Fincher has a trance-like style. His canniest trick (lifted from Manhunter) is to reveal just enough clinical carnage so that we re-create the details of the killings in our heads. With its lavish hallucinatory gloom, Seven holds you in its grip. Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, working within a stock old cop-young cop routine, spark each other. As the killer, Kevin Spacey is like the world's most demonic sissy.