Se7en: Experiencing this movie in an IMAX theater was a revelation

This week, David Fincher’s classic Se7en has been given a limited IMAX release in honour of its 30th anniversary and as a teaser for its upcoming 4K release on Tuesday. As someone who missed the original film in theaters, I was pretty excited to revisit Fincher’s classic via an IMAX screening, especially since I probably hadn’t seen the film in about twenty years or so. 

One thing worth noting is that the screening I attended in downtown Montreal was at least three-quarters full, which is impressive considering it’s a movie that’s pretty much streaming everywhere. Folks like going to see these classics on the big screen, especially in the IMAX format, with the recent re-releases of Interstellar and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace also pulling in big bucks. 

So how did it look?

Pretty incredible, if I do say so myself. I was a bit worried that Fincher, who was said to be going over the 4K transfer with a fine-tooth-comb, might be tempted to revise the movie’s visual style somewhat to bring it more in line with his later work. As we all know, Fincher’s long been an advocate of digital video, with everything post-Zodiac having a razor-sharp, digital video style that Fincher himself defended in the terrific documentary Side by Side, which compares and contrasts the benefits of celluloid vs film. Se7en was shot on 35mm film in a process called Super 35 by Darius Khondji, and some premium prints of the film were shipped to theatres using a bleach bypass system, which gave the film a unique look. When it was transferred to home video (and early DVD copies), this format was not used, with Fincher using the first DVD special edition and early Blu-ray releases to correct how it was featured.

Now, it has to be said that Se7en certainly had a pretty extensive restoration done, as a movie shot in Super 35 (which is somewhat lower resolution than other 35mm stocks) shouldn’t look so pristine, with the IMAX version being rather jaw-dropping. However, as far as I’m concerned, this is a restoration done right, as it still looks like it was shot on film (there’s a modest layer of grain visible in some shots). It certainly doesn’t reek of the kind of revisionist filmmaking some have accused James Cameron of doing. Se7en looks better than ever, but it also looks like a movie shot in 1995, thank God.

As for the quality of the film, I actually found the experience of watching it somewhat bittersweet. Why on earth would I call Se7en bittersweet? It’s because I was struck by the fact that a movie like this would never be made nowadays, at least not by a major studio. Sure, a director on Fincher’s level might be able to push something like this through (although he’d be crucified on social media for the movie’s extreme content), but in 1995 Fincher was just an up-and-comer, and in fact suffered from the fact that his feature debut, Alien 3, was considered something of a disaster. A studio would never allow an untested director to make something so black-hearted and nihilistic. 

What’s ever crazier is that back in 1995, we almost took movies like this for granted. Even though 2024 was a perfectly good year for movies, was there anything this year that came out that was as good as Se7en? Film, as an art form, has gotten “safe”, and it’s unthinkable that, in this era of “second screen content,” something like Se7en would not only hit theaters, but also be a major hit (it was one of the 10 highest grossing movies of the year in ’95). Sure, one could argue that a movie like Longlegs follows in the Se7en tradition, but, with no offence meant to that movie, Longlegs is like a romantic comedy compared to Se7en, which is even more extreme than I remembered it being. Nowadays, social media would have a field day with Se7en, and even back in ’95 the movie was controversial. But, the discourse was different. People let art be art, and even though the movie was attacked in some quarters, people by and large respected Fincher’s vision, and even those who hated it initially came around years later (Denzel Washington is one of them). Nowadays, you’d have people running out of Se7en in tears, posting on TikTok about how they have PTSD after watching it. One cringes imagining the kinds of think pieces we’d have to read…

Suffice it to say that if Se7en happens to be playing anywhere near you, I highly recommend seeing it on an IMAX screen. It’s an incredible theatrical experience, and I can’t wait to pick this one up in 4K. As for the future of film, I hope the people who green-light movies sit up and pay attention when a movie like Se7en can still pull in a big audience theatrically despite being so readily available at home. Deadline states that it made just under a million dollars this weekend on only 200 screens, with most venues only playing it once or twice a day as it’s sharing screens with Nosferatu. What’s the lesson? It’s that back in the day, a studio would allow a director to make a feel-bad movie on a grand scale, ignoring the fact that the content would make it controversial. Heck, a little controversy wasn’t even considered a bad thing like it seems to be now. The fact is, people don’t always want to feel good when they go see a movie. If they did, movies like Se7en wouldn’t become classics that still manage to fill theaters thirty years down the line.