Se7en is the 493rd episode of the Screen Junkies comedy series Honest Trailers. It was written by Spencer Gilbert, Danielle Radford, and Lon Harris. It was narrated by Jon Bailey as Epic Voice Guy. It parodies the 1995 crime thriller film Se7en. It was published on May 2, 2023. It is 6 minutes and 12 seconds long. It has been viewed over 100,000 times.
Script[]
From a director (David Fincher) who wants to stop obsessing over serial killers, but the voices in his head make him do it again (Zodiac), and again (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)), and again (Mindhunter), and coming soon, again (The Killer), comes a twisted tale that will change films forever, by making them replace title letters with numbers and thinking that it's in any way coooool. (S1m0ne, Tak3n, L4yer CakƐ, Fant4stic, Scre4m, Thir13en Ghosts, Lucky Number SLevin) It's nooooot.
Se7en (pronounced "Se-seven-en")
Head on down to the city -- Which one? They never say.
Mills: I've worked Homicide five years.
Somerset: Not here.
Tracy: So how long have you lived here?
Somerset: Too long.
Tracy: I hate this city.
-- where it's always pouring rain (montage of scenes taking place during a heavy rainstorm), the people are scum...
Mills: Do you like what you do for a living?
Man in Massage Parlor Booth: No, I don't.
...and even the possessed gerbils are holding housekeepers hostage (zooms in on an in-universe newspaper article titled "Housekeeper Held Hostage By Child's Possessed Gerbil: Three Days of Terror"), in a hard-boiled cop film whose bleak tone defined the next few decades, until sometime around 2010 when homicide detectives all turned back into sassy aristocrats.
Mrs Hudson ("The Abominable Bride"): Mr Holmes!
Hercule Poirot (Murder on the Orient Express (2017)): There are no killers here.
Benoit Blanc: This crime clashed... with the presence of Benoit Blanc.
(in a heavy Southern accent) I say, uh, I see, uh, the murderer here appears to have fed this large creature for-- (shows Somerset lifting up the Gluttony victim's head) Oh, my word!
Journey to a city that needs Jesus and/or Batman, but all they got is Mills and Somerset. One detective is almost out of f*cks to give.
Somerset: This can't be my last duty. It's just gonna go on and on and on.
Police Captain: You're retiring.
The other, too many f*cks to handle. (montage of Mills dropping the f-bomb)
Mills: What's in the f*cking box?!
Follow along on Somerset's journey from a sad, irritable, lonely man to... well, still that, but he's more or less at peace with it, in one of Morgan Freeman's many roles as "Black guy who is too old for your white nonsense".
Somerset: I can't get involved in this.
He's backed up by a powerhouse performance from Brad Pitt, playing a man 10% less dumb than he was in Burn After Reading.
Chad Feldheimer: And then there's these other files that are just, like... numbers. Arrayed. Numbers and dates and numbers and... numbers... and... dates. And numbers and...
Mills: "The Marquis de Sade." (pronounced "Cha-day")
Somerset: It's the Marquis de Sade. (pronounced "Sah-d")
Mills: Whatever.
And joining him is real-life-girlfriend-at-the-time Gwyneth Paltrow, a pregnant woman with the only moments of kindness in the whole story, so you just know they'll do something like chop her head off and mail it to her husband. (shows Somerset recoiling at the sight of Tracy's head in the box) This is Fincher we're talking about; embrace the edge.
Return to when Kevin Spacey had to play a role to creep you out...
Doe: You're looking for me.
...as brutal serial killer John Doe. He's taking virtue signaling very literally, in a seven-day spree that gets lazier as it goes along, where, by the weekend, he's trotting out Jigsaw's "B" material...
Mills: Uh, sleeping pills. Glued to one hand. Telephone glued to the other.
...then, like a teenager realizing his project is due the next day, goes, "Uh, uh, I-I wish I was the cop I met two days ago; that makes me Envy, right? D-Does that work? Aw man, I can't believe I blew the whole year on Sloth..."
Mills: I got a hair sample, I got a stool sample, I got piss, I got fingernails.
Tired of cop movies where they try their best all the time? Get ready for a more realistic look at the profession...
Police Captain: (walking by a sleeping Somerset and Mills) Wake up, Glimmer Twins. (loudly claps his hands)
...where Somerset and Mills generally just wait around...
Mills: I'm sick of all this waiting.
Somerset: This is the job.
Fingerprint Technician: --maybe you guys wanna cross your fingers somewhere else.
...catch up on their reading list (montage of Somerset and Mills pulling out books to read), fall back on their go-to of suspending civil rights (shows Mills kicking in a door)...
Mills: --how is this legal?
Somerset: Oh, "legal", "illegal". These terms don't apply.
...and utterly fail to get their man or stop a single murder from occurring.
Somerset: John Doe has the upper hand.
Yet your partner wears the same children's basketball tie every day; I say he's got the upper hand.
So let the punishment fit the grime, in a film that opens with a Nine Inch Nails song and somehow gets more sulky from there, that's sure to churn your stomach with a real-life villainous mastermind...
Frank Underwood (House of Cards (US)): If I didn't pay the price for the things we both know I did do, I'm certainly not going to pay the price for the things I didn't do.
...twisted descriptions of torture that's even worse than seeing it...
Crazed Man in Massage Parlor: He put that thing on me. / <GASP!> He made me do it.
...and just a big bucket of puke to the face for good measure...
Mills: Got a bucket here.
Somerset: What's in it?
Mills: (looks at the collected vomit in the bucket) Agh! Ohh, God...!
...that's still a beautifully crafted bummer, with just the right amount of humor to lighten the mood.
Somerset: (after seeing a dead dog on the side of the road) Dead dog.
Doe: I didn't do that.
Ha! It's funny because the dog died of natural causes.
Starring: Morgue and Freeman (Morgan Freeman as Det. Lt. William Somerset); Once Upon a Time in Uh... Seattle? (Brad Pitt as Det. David Mills); Pepper Plops (Gwyneth Paltrow as Theresa "Tracy" Mills); The Box Troll (Kevin Spacey as John Doe); Seven!? I Didn't Know They Stacked Sh*t That High! (R. Lee Ermey as Police Captain, alongside his role as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket); Shaft in City Hall (Richard Roundtree as D.A. Martin Talbot); and All Cox Roles are B******s (John C. McGinley as California).
California: (to the "corpse" of the Sloth victim) You got what you deserved. (gets startled by the victim suddenly coughing) He's alive! He's alive!
2 K1ll 4 M0ck1n6 N3rd
The honest title for Se7en was ‘2 K1ll 4 M0ck1n6 N3rd’. Titles designed by Robert Holtby.
It's really too bad this didn't lead to other "numerical list-themed killer" movies.
Somerset: There are seven deadly sins, Captain.
(in a Morgan Freeman impression) "There are four basic food groups, Captain." "There are seven dwarfs, Captain." "There are ten little piggies, Captain."
Viewer's Comments[]
Please say "WHAT'S IN THE BOOOOOOOOOX?!!?" - Benjamin Abramowitz
say: "When you have nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, diarrhea" - Kunjiklub _
Please say "Mommy is with the maggots now." in an epic creepy voice! - Valmont1978
Please say "I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY" - Arafat Rahman
Say "Follow me on Tik Tok - Movie Maniac
@epicvoiceguy.
Trivia[]
Reception[]
Production Credits[]
Voice Narration: Jon Bailey aka Epic Voice Guy
Title Design: Robert Holtby
Written by: Spencer Gilbert, Danielle Radford, Lon Harris
Produced by: Spencer Gilbert
Edited by: Kevin Williamsen
Post-Production Supervisor: Emin Bassavand
Post-Production Coordinator: Mikołaj Kossakowski
Assistant Editor: Rebecca Castaneda
Director of Video Production: Max Dionne