10 Devastating Off-Screen Movie Deaths

Realistically, you could make an argument for most of David Fincher's films being his masterpiece, Seven potentially more than most. The story of Detectives Mills (Brad Pitt) and Somerset (Morgan Freeman) chasing a serial killer is dark, gruesome, and utterly compelling.

With Kevin Spacey's John Doe eluding Mills and Somerset for the majority of the film, until he decided to reveal himself, almost all of the deaths in Seven happen off-screen, and some of them are pretty damn brutal. Easily the worst however, is the death of Detective Mills' wife, Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow).

The murderer made a point of killing based on the seven sins, taking the lives of those he felt were guilty of committing one of them to make a set, however Tracy was innocent. She was used as a pawn to instigate the final two sins, Doe's envy of their happy life, and Mills' wrath.

The hotheaded detective played by Brad Pitt had been a target of John Doe, and he was manipulated perfectly. How else to get him to submit to his anger than to not only murder his innocent wife, but to present to him a box with her head inside? There may have been crime scenes created by Doe that were physically hard to look at, but this was his most brutal murder by far.