The film Se7en, directed by David Fincher in 1995, was at the time both a shocking and deeply disturbing text that left audiences with a profound psychological trauma, that some film critics have said is reminiscent of the classic genre of Film Noir, calling the film an example of Modern Noir. This is what I will be investigating in this essay.
             In terms of plot, Se7en is a narrative with a bleak and sinister undertone, built up to a landmark ending which director David Fincher was forced to fight for in order to give the film that gloomy and menacing feeling that it holds so well. Film Noir has a number of plot motifs that must be followed for it to be truly called Noir. Firstly, most Noir films begin with usually one protagonist being given a task, a mission to follow through with by a client. This is true in the classic Noir film 'Out of the Past' (1947) where Jeff Bailey, the main protagonist is offered a job by Whit Sterling, a criminal gambler, involving the retrieval of documents from a tax lawyer. The film in question, Se7en, also uses this beginning to the plot, as the two characters are asked to investigate the case of the serial killer. Although there are two characters instead of the conventional one, the nature of the identification is the same.
             Typically in Film Noir texts, the main protagonist is deceived by someone, or a number of people. This is our second plot motif identifiable in Se7en, as the serial killer John Doe deceives Detectives Mills and Somerset a number of times, as he makes them believe that the sloth victim may in fact be the killer, or that he manages to take a picture of Mills as an anonymous photographer among other circumstances, leading them further and further into his 'web of deceit'. In another classic Noir text 'Double Indemnity' (1944), directed by Billy Wilder we can also see the same narrative tool, as the main protagonist Walter Neff is deceived by his lo...