Se7en It is one of the best Hollywood thrillers and one of the best films of David Fincher. There are multiple elements that make this film a fabulous experience: the main cast headed by Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Gwyneth Paltrow; the twists of the script; the disturbing images and the surprises that the viewer takes away. One of the most remembered moments is when Freeman’s character finds a box containing the head of Paltrow’s character. The audience deduces this from seeing blonde hair and drops of blood, but the camera never lands on the box so we can see the contents.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the director was asked if there was a prop head inside the box: “No, it’s totally ridiculous. I think we had a bag of about 3 kilos or 3 and a half kilos. We had done the research to find out if Gwyneth Paltrow’s body mass index was ‘X’, how much of that would be attributable to her head? And so we had an idea of what it would weigh and I think there was a weight to it“. A curious fact about this scene is that production tried to remove it from the script, but Fincher refused.
About how they carried out the shocking scene, he said: “And we put a wig there. I think the wig had a little blood on it, so some of the hair was sticking together. I think Morgan opened 16 or 17 of those things during filming. But as I always say, you don’t need to see what’s in the box if you have Morgan Freeman“. This January 10, the film – known as deadly sins– returned to theaters on the occasion of its 30th anniversary.
