Se7en (1995)

It’s not technically a horror movie, but as Steve says right out of the gate, it’s scary as fuck in so many ways. That’s Se7en, David Fincher’s 1995 trip through a rain-soaked, never-named city (“a shittier New York without any of the cool shit,” in Nic’s words), and it’s Steve’s pick for Shocktoberfest. He first saw it in college during a brief stint as a film major, when someone insisted it was the perfect introduction to Fincher. Nic caught it around senior year of high school, when the lucky households with HBO and Cinemax were dubbing their own VHS copies. For this episode he watched it twice, once to feel it and once with notes. Dedication.

Both dads agree the title, with that little 7 jammed in the middle, is impossible to say out loud. They also agree that in a movie stuffed with horrific imagery, the thing that sticks with everyone is a ceiling full of pine tree air fresheners. Nic still brings it up every couple of months whenever something stinks.

From there it’s a gleefully grim stroll through the sins. Morgan Freeman’s switchblade gets a Best Supporting Actor campaign, his bedside metronome gets declared psychotic, and Steve, who dabbles in screenwriting himself, swoons over the names Somerset and Mills, which sound like either a wine cooler or a law firm. A cop getting annoyed at a detective for asking questions spirals into “Where you going with that wrench, plumber?” Nic is personally offended by Mills rolling around with his dogs on a newspaper-covered floor in his work clothes. He calls Marquis de "Sade" the only joke in the whole movie and declares the home darkroom “the official hobby of creeps.” Steve puts his writer hat back on to ask why Tracy would tell her husband’s partner of two days that she’s pregnant, and Nic nominates that scene as your official Junior Mints and bathroom break. There’s even a detour into the FBI tracking library books, once the stuff of mid-’90s conspiracy nuts and now, per Nic, “prematurely correct.”

Seven sins, one switchblade, and about a thousand little pine trees.

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