Best theme song of all time? It’s one of the biggest movies of the 1990s, and its opening blew us away!

A little over 27 years ago (yes, already…) a film hit theaters that would shatter and redefine the codes of the thriller: David Fincher’s Se7en.

With over 4.9 million admissions, the film remains the box office’s biggest hit to date, far ahead of its second best theatrical hit, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, with 2.59 million.

Se7en, a work that left a mark on the cinematographic memory and the retina of the audience. A film of deep darkness, a thriller, a thriller, a horror film… Se7en is all of these at the same time.

But above all, it is one of the most original, provocative and disturbing films to come out of Hollywood in decades. Because there is a before and after Se7en.

The film’s fabulous opening credits also became a textbook. While Fincher considered entrusting production to Mark Romanek, it was ultimately designed by Kyle Cooper and edited by Angus Wall.

Cooper is simply one of the greatest artists when it comes to creating theme songs, of which there are dozens, each one more memorable than the last.

The influence of his work goes beyond the framework of cinema: he is a long-time collaborator Game Director Hideo Kojima, for whom he created the credits for some of his games, including his latest, Death Stranding.

“Show Doe’s head mutilated…”

Se7en’s credits take viewers inside the mind of a tortured being, a religiously obsessed serial killer. She is meticulous, takes care of clipping papers, photos, edits and publishes her disturbing diary…

The feeling of discomfort and oppression was greatly enhanced by the remix of the song’s melody closer By Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor’s band.

Here it is again for fun…

“I was thinking about taking the train from his Somerset house, his country house, to the city. We would throw ideas around and Fincher would say, ‘Show Do who cuts himself with a razor.’

And we could not move forward. Fincher then suggested Findlay Bunting Using an old camera to get faded, scratched, almost handwritten credits.

We used Kodalith, a low-sensitivity film, to impress just the synths. Backlight, shake the film while shooting, stop the camera, open it, expose the film to light, break the focus, shake, experiment, put a window or something else in front of the lens, obviously anything that can change the image. Cooper said.

We wanted to make the audience curious about what this guy would be like. He must be super, super evil!

Added to this were John Doe’s notebooks, which we see in these credits and later in the film, which were designed by designers Clive Pearcy and John Sabel. It was they who came up with the idea of ​​mixing these (many!) pages of texts written by John Doe, regularly interspersed with macabre photographs and other religious artifacts.

“I like the idea of ​​John Doe planning his notebooks and these murders very expertly and drinking tea while gouging out a child’s eyes, all at the same time.

Then we thought about crossing everything and censoring certain words. We insisted on the personality, the artisanal character of all the credits. We emphasized the unhealthy side, delved into the mind of the killer.”

In this creative enterprise, ideas are born and sometimes flow where we least expect them. “Every day I woke up and tried to think of new ideas, the other day, for example, I accidentally found fishing hooks at home.

There’s also this shot of her sliding her hair into an envelope. I actually found this hair in my shower and thought, “Cool!”

Do the deformed hands appear in those credits? “We looked at a lot of models and the one we hired was from a guy who did tai chi. He was a pretty big guy, a weird, scary guy who looked pretty scary when we were giving him a shot.

Her hands looked quite elegant, but the funny thing was that David was offended by this choice. He said, “Why did you pick this guy? His hands look nothing like Kevin Spacey’s!”

If you look at Kevin Spacey’s hands, his fingers are long and thin, but this guy’s hands were quite thick. Fincher was very suspicious, but I thought no one would notice, so we went ahead with it. Good luck to him.

It would take Angus Wall five long weeks to patiently assemble these images from the film credits. “I loved horror movies as a child” Kyle Cooper admitted Empirein 2010.

“And I was disappointed when they didn’t show the monster until the end. I had an idea about the killer before they finally caught him. We wanted to make the public curious about what this guy was. He has to be super, super bad.”.

The bet lived up to all expectations with this masterful opening that was a landmark like the film.