10 Biggest Downer Endings In Major Movies

Two good cops hunt down a very bad murderer, and in the end they catch him and kill him. Sounds like a fairly standard, crowd-pleasing conclusion to a thriller, doesn't it? However, whilst Seven might tick all those boxes, it most definitely doesn't leave the audience feeling that all is right in the world once again.

David Fincher's 1995 film casts Morgan Freeman as William Somerset and Brad Pitt as David Mills, the detectives assigned to the case of a serial killer who uses the Biblical seven deadly sins as the basis of his crimes.

However, the man they know only as John Doe (Kevin Spacey) has seemingly only made it up to murder number 5, pride, when he turns himself in. But in the shell-shocker of a finale, the final stages of Doe's plan come to light.

After the killer demands that Somerset and Mills escort him to a remote location, a delivery van arrives with a box, which - although we're never shown it - we learn contains the head of Mills' wife (Gwyneth Paltrow), Doe having killed her out of envy for their domestic bliss.

His intent in so doing is to provoke Mills to enact the last deadly sin, wrath, by killing Doe in a vengeful rage; and, despite Somerset's warnings that to do so would mean that Doe wins, Mills does just that.