Serial Killers of "Seven" & "Copycat"
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Two recent films that have certain similarities in subject matter are Seven and Copycat, both of which deal with the hunt for a serial killer and both of which involve a sort of Hitchcockian borrowing in terms of the deliberate use of one of his favorite devices, the transference of guilt. The two films have certain other similarities to one another--each presents the usual pairing of a veteran police detective with a junior officer, each involves a serial killer who taunts the police and in effect dares them to catch him, each indicates the darkness at the heart of the killer, and each indulges in a certain amount of gore and in some of the trappings of the horror movie. In other respects, though, the films are quite different, with Seven being much the darker vision and the more daring treatment while Copycat is much more a clear star vehicle for two women and is packaged in a much slicker format. Each depends for its existence, however, on the fact that there is already a long-established sub-genre consisting of this type of film, and many of the scenes, characters, situations, and moods of both films come from territory mined many times before. Each film tries both to play on the expectations of its genre while at the same time undercutting them somewhat in order to take a fresh approach, or at least to convey the idea that something fresh is taking place. The films achieve different levels of success. A semiotic critic would find clear and direct relations between
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east, probably an industrial city blackened by soot. In fact, there is a street sign near the end of the film that points to Los Angeles as the site, though the film looks like no image of Los Angeles ever before presented on screen. It is not clear if the street sign is an error, something the filmmakers thought would not be identified, or a real sign pointing to L.A. as the locale, but in any case the American city in this film is a place that serves as a nurturing ground for sin, evil, disease, and everything that is bad in human nature.
This is alluded to by the younger detective's wife when she meets with the older detective and talks about her trepidations about living in the city and about having her husband on this sort of job. Her fears seem understandable if a bit overstated, but by the end of the film they have been horribly confirmed. The world of the police is often shown to be more terrible than the public realizes, for they deal with all the worst in human nature on a daily basis. In the context of this film, the older detective has, as they say, "seen it all," but he has remained a human being with understanding for others. It is the younger detective who has not developed that sort of acceptance of evil who
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2256
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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