Se7en (1995)

Se7en is a morbid, unrelenting thriller. It doesn't merely stare into the abyss, it jumps in. Two detectives, one rookie and one veteran, come across the worst murders they've ever seen, but such that are intricately designed, they know the killer is trying to prove a point. Freeman's character connects the dots to the Seven Deadly Sins as inspiration for the killings. Once they catch him, they come to find that he's as crazy as you'd expect, but more self-righteous than they would ever believe, and all along, the religious backdrop of these murders were intentional.

David Fincher is a master of the macabre and has become a household name for bleak films 23 years later. You can credit him for how deeply appalling the bloody crime scenes unfold for us. The little stories behind them, the production design.. Then we come to Kevin Spacey as the killer. Looking back now, it's a bit rich to see him play a man righteously outraged by a decaying American society and delivering his sick sense of street justice on sinners. Arguably, Spacey himself would have been among his victims. But perhaps even Spacey knows that, just as his character does here as well. Truth isn't just stranger than fiction, it's horrifying.