Seven Turns the Deadly Sins Into an Art Installation
American Cinematographer's reading of horror is that the machinery changes while the fuel does not: the fright film's devices shift over the years, but the horrors on screen are still the worldly ills Greek myth has Pandora let loose.
In screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker's Seven, the magazine argues, those universal turpitudes get grisly new characterizations, as a serial killer seeks revenge for society's ills by building his crimes on the Seven Deadly Sins — Sloth, Gluttony, Pride, Greed, Envy, Wrath and Lust — each treated as a perversely thematic statement.
The telling detail is curatorial: the victims are metaphoric centerpieces in scenes resembling bizarre art installations, which makes the killer less a judge than an exhibitor with a feel for placement.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Curator is the right insult here. An artist needs an audience, and this one assembles his one viewer at a time.
The Pandora frame is doing more work than the gallery gibe. If the ills were already out and loose, the killer is only arranging what society had in stock — a colder point than calling him an artist.