The Most Disturbing Death in 'Seven' Isn't the One You Think

The Big Picture

• The film Seven directed by David Fincher explores the seven deadly sins, with each sin represented through gruesome murders.
• The "Sloth" sin in the movie is the most disturbing and sadistic death, involving a victim who is left strapped to a bed for a year and slowly starved to death.
• The psychological torment inflicted on the victim is particularly terrifying, as he experiences unimaginable pain and suffering for a long time without any hope of escape or relief.

There are sins, and then there are those trespasses considered to be the most horrific and despicable of all. We have come to know these seven particular sins as deadly sins. David Fincher's seminal 1995 gritty-as-hell noir psychological thriller Seven, starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, is based on the real-life experiences of writer Andrew Kevin Walker. He wrote about his stirring move from a small suburban town to New York City and how the things he saw and heard about in the big city impacted his life. When Fincher decided he was going to direct a film based on the disturbing images Walker wrote about, he embraced the darkness of a level of depravity that most of us have only read about or seen onscreen. What resulted was one of the best films of the decade with a twist ending that, almost 30 years later, hasn't lost a bit of its luster. But, what is the sickest, most abominable, and most disgusting death sin in the movie? In the film, the sins are based on Dante's epic work, 'The Inferno' and include gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, lust, and pride. Everyone has an idea of what these sins may look like, and then John Doe (Kevin Spacey) has his own much more bloody and grotesque interpretation. But there is one of the deadly sin deaths that we believe is by far the most sadistic.

Se7en

Two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his motives.

David Fincher Sets Up 'Seven's Darkest Sin From the Beginning

In the film, David Mills (Pitt) and William Somerset (Freeman) are two detectives who have just started working together when the John Doe killings begin. Fincher plans the way he is going to unveil his most twisted and evil sin from the film's beginning. Starting with the setting, the film takes place in a dank and gloomy inner city that, even though it is never named, is intended to be something akin to New York. He then sets the taut and unflinching pace with an abominable setting of a morbidly obese man bound and forced to eat himself to death. Mills and Somerset come upon the bloated corpse with his face buried in a bowl of spaghetti and later find out from the coroner that he was then kicked in the gut until his intestines burst from the inside out. This is John Doe's understanding of the sin of "gluttony".

Somerset is the more experienced and polished of the two and suspects that this may be the first of a string of killings based on the modus operandi and the staging of the corpse, but Mills isn't buying it yet. He needs to see more evidence. Well, John Doe is more than willing to give him what he wants when they discover a second mutilated body of a criminal defense attorney. Doe believes that a person capable of enriching himself by defending people he knows are guilty of hideous crimes is the perfect example of pure American "greed". And just like that, Mills and Somerset are in the middle of a serial spree of heinous murders that will all be representations of Dante's seven deadly sins. And it is the next murder in the movie that is by far the most sick and twisted of all, including the infamous "What's in the box?!" grand finale.

"Sloth" Is the Most Twisted Killing in 'Seven'

Fincher brilliantly ties the second victim to the third, and this is the most stomach-churning and psychologically cruel killing of them all. The lawyer whom John Doe kills over "greed" once represented a thieving reprobate by the name of Theodore "Victor" Allen (Michael Reid MacKay). Doe planted his prints at the site of the second murder to lure law enforcement to a particular address. Half of the city's police force heads out, lights twirling, sirens blaring, and guns at the ready for this known criminal's apartment thinking they are going to collar John Doe. What they find is something that audiences never forget.

Instead of their suspected murderer, they find Doe's third victim. A body had been strapped to a bed for exactly one year to the day when the SWAT team burst through his door. There are hundreds of pine tree air fresheners dangling from the ceiling and the body is motionless underneath a sheet. When the person doesn't respond to the police, they pull back the sheet to reveal Victor's mummified body, which is so rank and malnourished it sends members of the SWAT team running for a wastebasket. Somerset discovers a year's worth of Polaroids chronicling Victor's slow and agonizing death spiral from a fit young man to an abscess-covered pile of bones left before his eyes. It truly is one of the most ghoulish scenes ever put on the big screen as John Doe left Victor strapped in a room with just enough fluid and antibiotics from an IV bag to keep him alive for an entire year. He made Victor a spectacle to be gawked at and reviled by as the sin of "Sloth" and it's the most disturbing death in Seven for many reasons. As if the scene itself wasn't torture enough, a sudden gasp reveals that he's still somehow alive!

Why is "Sloth" the Most Disturbing Death in 'Seven'?

To be sure, the site of a man left to starve and die is viscerally raw and invokes so much visual and physical disgust. What makes John Doe's treatment of Victor and the sin of "Sloth" so terrifying is the psychological torment that this man, no matter how vile or felonious, must have gone through. When Somerset and Mills speak to the doctor at the hospital, he says to them, "Even if his brain weren't mush, which it is, he chewed off his tongue long ago". Somerset asks if Victor can be helpful at all, and the doctor replies, "Detective, he would die of shock right now if you shined a flashlight in his eyes. He's experienced about as much pain and suffering as anyone I've encountered...and he still has Hell to look forward to." This provides a fate that would be ill for anyone to go through.

When we experience physical or emotional pain, the old adage "this too shall pass" brings about some solace in that it'll eventually end. For Victor, it was a never-ending nightmarish spiral into an emotional abyss that had never been captured on film before or since. Those seen in "Lust" and "Pride" are extremely painful, but finite, punishments. Even what David Mills goes through in the film's final sequence is more shocking than it is torturous. The box scene happens, he sees what's inside, and he responds by shooting John Doe in the head. Although there is some measure of satisfaction for Mills at becoming "Wrath," it's a given that he'll still suffer on some level for the rest of his life because of it. His only solace is that when his mind inevitably wanders or concentrates on something else, he will get an occasional reprieve that Victor and the deadly sin of "Sloth" were never afforded - or the deliverance of death like the six other deadly sin killings in Seven.

'Seven' is available to stream on MAX in the U.S.

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