Movie Smarts

Se7en Quiz: Follow Every Detail

You have seen the movie. Now see how much of it you can bring back.

Published 2026-10-24 Updated 2026-10-24 15 questions

Se7en: The New Job Has a Very Bad First Week

A veteran detective is nearly ready to leave when a disturbing case lands in his lap. His new partner is impatient, ambitious, and still getting used to the city. Together they follow a killer who treats each crime as part of a larger message. The weather is miserable, the clues are worse, and going home at the end of a shift stops feeling like much of a break.

Look closely. This is a bad case for jumping to conclusions.

1. Who directed Se7en?
- Michael Mann
- Jonathan Demme
- David Fincher
- Christopher Nolan
Fincher hadn't made a feature since the bruising experience of Alien 3 when New Line sent him an early draft of Andrew Kevin Walker's script by mistake, with the bleak ending the studio had wanted softened. He took the job on condition that it stayed.
2. Who plays William Somerset?
- Laurence Fishburne
- Danny Glover
- Denzel Washington
- Morgan Freeman
Freeman's detective is a week from retirement and named, by screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, after the novelist Somerset Maugham. Denzel Washington was offered the other lead, Mills, and turned it down, which he later said he regretted.
3. Who plays David Mills?
- Matt Damon
- Brad Pitt
- Ethan Hawke
- Edward Norton
Pitt injured his arm going through a car windshield while shooting the chase in the rain, so Mills spends the last act with his arm in a cast and the injury written into the script. Edward Norton would be his co-star in Fincher's Fight Club four years later.
4. What is Somerset preparing to do when the case begins?
- Become police chief
- Move into teaching full-time
- Transfer to the FBI
- Retire
Somerset has seven days left and asks to be taken off the case, having stopped believing the work does any good. By the end he tells the captain he'll be around, and quotes Hemingway on the world being worth fighting for, agreeing only with the second part.
5. What is Mills's wife's name?
- Tracy
- Sarah
- Rachel
- Beth
Tracy has the detectives to dinner, the first thing that thaws the partnership, and the apartment shudders every time a train passes, a detail the realtor left out. She hates the city, and says so to Somerset over breakfast rather than to her husband.
6. What does Somerset use to help himself fall asleep?
- A white-noise machine
- A metronome
- A record player
- A ticking alarm clock
Somerset winds a metronome on his nightstand each night and lets the ticking shut out the noise of the city while he tries to sleep. It's the tidy habit of a man who lives alone, the opposite of the Mills apartment, where the dogs have the run of the place.
7. What connects the killer's crimes?
- The seven deadly sins
- The four seasons
- The signs of the zodiac
- The days of creation
The list is gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy and wrath, and the first five victims turn up in that order across Somerset's final week. Doe takes his sermons from Dante, Chaucer and Milton, the writers Somerset looks up in the library.
8. Which sin is represented by the first major crime the detectives investigate?
- Gluttony
- Wrath
- Pride
- Envy
An obese man is made to eat at gunpoint for many hours until a kick to the stomach ruptures him from the inside. Somerset goes back and finds the word gluttony written in grease behind the refrigerator, along with a note quoting Milton's Paradise Lost.
9. What profession does the victim associated with greed have?
- Stockbroker
- Politician
- Lawyer
- Banker
Eli Gould, a defense attorney, is made to cut off a pound of his own flesh, with a nod to The Merchant of Venice. Behind a painting hung upside down, fingerprints spell out HELP ME, and they lead not to the killer but to his next victim.
10. Which sin is linked to the victim found restrained to a bed?
- Wrath
- Envy
- Lust
- Sloth
Victor, a drug dealer, has been strapped to his bed for a year and kept barely alive, with dated Polaroids on the wall to prove it. He looks like a corpse until he coughs, sending one of the SWAT team reeling, and his were the prints at the lawyer's office.
11. Where does Somerset research the killer's literary references?
- A library
- A newspaper office
- A university laboratory
- A church archive
He goes at night, when the guards he knows are playing cards, and reads Dante, Chaucer and Milton while Bach's 'Air' plays. Later he pays an FBI contact for a list of people who borrowed the same books, which is how the detectives get Doe's address.
12. What identity does the killer use?
- Richard Roe
- John Smith
- John Doe
- Joe Public
The name is the one morgues give unidentified bodies, and it's all the police ever get, since he has sliced the skin off his fingertips and leaves no prints. Richard Roe is the second placeholder name in legal cases, a slightly too clever wrong answer.
13. Who plays the killer?
- John Malkovich
- Kevin Spacey
- Gary Oldman
- Willem Dafoe
Spacey asked to be left out of the opening credits and the marketing so nobody would be waiting for him, and his name leads the end credits instead. He shaved his head for the part, and The Usual Suspects, released the same year, won him his first Oscar.
14. How does the killer eventually come into police custody?
- Somerset finds him at a hotel
- He turns himself in
- Mills traps him in a subway
- He is caught at the airport
He walks into the precinct soaked in blood, hands up, shouting for the detectives and announcing that they are looking for him. He then offers to lead them to two more bodies in exchange for a full confession, and the drive out of the city follows.
15. A remix of which band's song runs under the opening titles?
- Ministry
- Marilyn Manson
- Nine Inch Nails
- Rammstein
Kyle Cooper's scratched, jittery title sequence shows Doe at work on his notebooks, cut to a remix of 'Closer' called 'Closer (Precursor).' At the other end the credits roll downward, to David Bowie's 'The Hearts Filthy Lesson.'

All the answers

1. Who directed Se7en?

David Fincher

Fincher hadn't made a feature since the bruising experience of Alien 3 when New Line sent him an early draft of Andrew Kevin Walker's script by mistake, with the bleak ending the studio had wanted softened. He took the job on condition that it stayed.
2. Who plays William Somerset?

Morgan Freeman

Freeman's detective is a week from retirement and named, by screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, after the novelist Somerset Maugham. Denzel Washington was offered the other lead, Mills, and turned it down, which he later said he regretted.
3. Who plays David Mills?

Brad Pitt

Pitt injured his arm going through a car windshield while shooting the chase in the rain, so Mills spends the last act with his arm in a cast and the injury written into the script. Edward Norton would be his co-star in Fincher's Fight Club four years later.
4. What is Somerset preparing to do when the case begins?

Retire

Somerset has seven days left and asks to be taken off the case, having stopped believing the work does any good. By the end he tells the captain he'll be around, and quotes Hemingway on the world being worth fighting for, agreeing only with the second part.
5. What is Mills's wife's name?

Tracy

Tracy has the detectives to dinner, the first thing that thaws the partnership, and the apartment shudders every time a train passes, a detail the realtor left out. She hates the city, and says so to Somerset over breakfast rather than to her husband.
6. What does Somerset use to help himself fall asleep?

A metronome

Somerset winds a metronome on his nightstand each night and lets the ticking shut out the noise of the city while he tries to sleep. It's the tidy habit of a man who lives alone, the opposite of the Mills apartment, where the dogs have the run of the place.
7. What connects the killer's crimes?

The seven deadly sins

The list is gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy and wrath, and the first five victims turn up in that order across Somerset's final week. Doe takes his sermons from Dante, Chaucer and Milton, the writers Somerset looks up in the library.
8. Which sin is represented by the first major crime the detectives investigate?

Gluttony

An obese man is made to eat at gunpoint for many hours until a kick to the stomach ruptures him from the inside. Somerset goes back and finds the word gluttony written in grease behind the refrigerator, along with a note quoting Milton's Paradise Lost.
9. What profession does the victim associated with greed have?

Lawyer

Eli Gould, a defense attorney, is made to cut off a pound of his own flesh, with a nod to The Merchant of Venice. Behind a painting hung upside down, fingerprints spell out HELP ME, and they lead not to the killer but to his next victim.
10. Which sin is linked to the victim found restrained to a bed?

Sloth

Victor, a drug dealer, has been strapped to his bed for a year and kept barely alive, with dated Polaroids on the wall to prove it. He looks like a corpse until he coughs, sending one of the SWAT team reeling, and his were the prints at the lawyer's office.
11. Where does Somerset research the killer's literary references?

A library

He goes at night, when the guards he knows are playing cards, and reads Dante, Chaucer and Milton while Bach's 'Air' plays. Later he pays an FBI contact for a list of people who borrowed the same books, which is how the detectives get Doe's address.
12. What identity does the killer use?

John Doe

The name is the one morgues give unidentified bodies, and it's all the police ever get, since he has sliced the skin off his fingertips and leaves no prints. Richard Roe is the second placeholder name in legal cases, a slightly too clever wrong answer.
13. Who plays the killer?

Kevin Spacey

Spacey asked to be left out of the opening credits and the marketing so nobody would be waiting for him, and his name leads the end credits instead. He shaved his head for the part, and The Usual Suspects, released the same year, won him his first Oscar.
14. How does the killer eventually come into police custody?

He turns himself in

He walks into the precinct soaked in blood, hands up, shouting for the detectives and announcing that they are looking for him. He then offers to lead them to two more bodies in exchange for a full confession, and the drive out of the city follows.
15. A remix of which band's song runs under the opening titles?

Nine Inch Nails

Kyle Cooper's scratched, jittery title sequence shows Doe at work on his notebooks, cut to a remix of 'Closer' called 'Closer (Precursor).' At the other end the credits roll downward, to David Bowie's 'The Hearts Filthy Lesson.'