Se7en’s dark tone and harrowing ending were considered a serious gamble upon the film’s release in 1995. After a disastrous test screening, director David Fincher had to battle with the studio to keep the film as it was (via Daily Hind). Ultimately, the venture paid off, revitalizing Fincher’s career and proving that star Pitt could deliver depth. The rich, almost gothic atmosphere of Se7en is praised to this day, with the use of rain proving one of the most engaging, atmospheric tools in its arsenal, but the downpour wasn’t in the original script.

Se7en's Constant Rain Was A Deliberate David Fincher Choice

While Andrew Kevin Walker’s Se7en screenplay does include some mention of rain, it isn’t nearly as heavy nor as constant as in David Fincher’s final film. While the rain can be heard beating down from the first moments of the finished film, the first line in Walker’s script is “Sunlight comes through the soot on the windows.” It’s a striking opening line, but Fincher has practical reasons for disregarding it. As for the heaviness of the rain, this was the only real option for Se7en since light rain is hard to create and even harder to capture on film.

David Fincher cites a primarily pragmatic motivation for the continuous nature of the rain. The '90s were a big decade for Pitt, who was already seeing his star rise thanks to such films as 1994’s Interview with the Vampire. As such, the actor was only available to shoot Se7en for 55 days. With such a tight timeframe, Fincher and the crew couldn’t afford to lose a day of shooting. As a result, the director chose to have it always raining in the film’s city sequences so that production wouldn’t be thrown off if it started raining for real (via Scraps From The Loft).

How Se7en's Rainfall Makes The Movie Better

While the primary reason for Se7en’s constant rainfall boils down to maximized shooting efficiency, the rain powerfully reinforces the film’s themes and contributes significantly to the visual and sonic atmosphere of the film. Even during interior scenes, the pounding of the rain is hard to ignore, reinforcing the bleak, noirish sense of a city oppressed by a thundering downpour of sin and nihilism, which can’t be forgotten even when the characters are safely inside. Likewise, the reflective quality of the rain achieves a black-and-white contrast that feeds into Se7en’s noir-esque visual language.

On a thematic level, the motif of rain feeds into Se7en’s biblical allusions. Serial killer John Doe’s image of himself as a weapon of God sent to eradicate sin is corroborated by the heavy rain, which calls to mind the Old Testament story of Noah’s Ark and the torrential flood which was intended to wipe the earth clean of the sins of humanity. After John Doe turns himself in on the 6th day of Se7en, the rain ceases, signaling that the flood-like killings have come to an end. Se7en’s climactic ending takes place in an arid landscape beneath a cloudless sky where, as with Noah’s Ark, the floods have finally receded.

Sources: Daily Hind, Scraps From The Loft