Known for his demanding style of filmmaking, requesting countless takes from his cast to achieve perfection, David Fincher is renowned for pushing both audiences and his characters to the edge, exploring the darker side of humanity.
With a career spanning 12 featurefilms, there’s a fascinating language within all of his films. From the obsession and bitterness of The Social Network, the unflinching hopelessness of Seven, or the cold logic of The Killer, David has created a style other filmmakers now seek to replicate. He’s established himself as one of the most gifted creative minds in cinema. Here are all of David Fincher’s feature films ranked from worst to best.
12. Alien 3 (1992)
Given David Fincher’s own immense distaste for Alien 3, it’s hard to place it anywhere else on this list. It’s a little slow, and it has the unenviable task of following the two prior instalments of the franchise — one of which is an all-time great of horror, and the other is an all-time sci-fi favourite.
In the third instalment, the fresh setting of a prison colony full of violent men mostly works, but a lot of the suspense falls a little flat as the film ambles towards its conclusion. Sigourney Weaver’s third turn as Ripley is as good as you’d expect, and Charles Dance’s performance as inmate-turned-doctor Clemens is phenomenal. Given all of thebehind-the-scenes issues, it could have been much worse — but there’s so much left on the table that it’ll leave you feeling, above all, frustrated.
11. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
One of David’s ‘weaker’ films, Benjamin Button is, in fact, a beautiful showcase of humanity, love, loss, and the journey through life we embark on. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, both on fine form, play off each other with tenderness.
But David’s direction elevates the film into something which almost matches its own grand ambition. The earthen colour palette is a magical touch, grounding the film while also giving it an otherworldly quality fitting of the premise. It’s saccharine and a little silly, but it’s lovely nonetheless.
10. Mank (2020)
Released around during the early stages of the pandemic, Mank never garnered the same attention the director’s other films received. But there’s a lot to like about his meditation on early Hollywood and the making of Citizen Kane. Centred around an outstanding performance from Gary Oldman as Herman Mankiewicz, writer of Citizen Kane, the film feels like a timeless ode to the creative process.
Cloaked in a dreamy black-and-white haze throughout, and a rich score delivered by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Mank has a lot going for it. It’s a passion project for David — originally written by his father Jack and intended to be released following The Game in 1997 — a passion oozes from the screen. While not his finest film, Mank is a gem, and great for people looking to explore a slightly less murky side of his filmography.
9. Panic Room (2002)
Much like The Game and The Killer, Panic Room isn’t the kind of knotty and complex movie that David is capable of making, but it displays a different side of the director, whose films are incredibly watchable. Shaped by its almost unbearable tension, Panic Room is tense and thrilling, with Jodie Foster bringing her A-game. There’s very little pretence or frills, just the claustrophobic experience of a distraught woman and her diabetic daughter, trapped inside their own panic room (obviously).
8. Fight Club (1999)
Smoking hot take: Fight Club just doesn’t work as well as people say it does. The performances are strong, the direction is excellent as usual, but it’s lacking… something. Maybe it’s the writing, maybe the cinematography, maybe the design, maybe it’s the controversy and the notoriety of the film itself. Maybe it’s the misunderstanding around the film that affects how it’s viewed, with its take on the modern male psyche being misconstrued as pro-violence view.
It’s great, but there are plenty of David Fincher films that deserve to sit higher on this list.
7. The Game (1997)
David’s follow-up to Seven never quite matched this, its predecessor, critically or commercially, and gets a little overlooked for it, which is a shame because there’s a lot to like about The Game. Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) is a lonely, high-powered, wealthy man who becomes entangled in the eponymous game thanks to his younger brother, Conrad (Sean Penn), by way of a birthday present, pushing Nicholas’s life of order into disarray.
The atmosphere of stifling darkness and brimming with paranoia pervades the film, and Michael’s performance will make you wish he and David would work together more.
6. The Killer (2023)
If you throw cold logic, a dim view on the age of modern technology and surveillance into a blender, and added a finishing dash of an absurd Fiona Bruce cameo, the resulting product would be The Killer.
David’s latest film sees Michael Fassbender’s titular hitman’s world thrown asunder after a job gone wrong. In an act of revenge, he embarks on a series of jobs to bring about balance to his disordered life. The Killer is so simple in its structure that it feels almost bold compared to David’s other films,harkening back to films like Panic Room.
5. Gone Girl (2014)
Gone Girl is an excellent film. The direction is, much like The Social Network, not necessarily the sole reason for that excellence however, despite its clear skill. An excellent film not solely down to David’s striking direction, Gone Girl makes ample use of its all-star cast: Rosamund Pike delivers an all-time, Oscar-nominated performance as Amy, perfect housewife turned Machiavellian psychopath.
The film leans in perfectly into David’s typical darkness, showcasing humanity’s many messy traits and our desire in relationships to keep up appearances, offering up the illusion that we are something we never actually are: perfect. That façade ultimately leads to violence and destruction, making this an immensely satisfying film.
4. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
David’s take on Stieg Larsson’s opening book of the Millennium Trilogy is one of the rare examples of an adaptation standing out as vastly superior to the source material. Rooney Mara is otherworldly in her performance as Lisbeth Salander, the anti-social computer hacker with a photographic memory. The brutality of the film blends flawlessly with the grimness of the world as David sees it.
As such. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo isn’t a film for everyone, but David is at his best when he’s in this world, pulling back the curtain on the more macabre side of the human psyche.
3. The Social Network (2010)
It is a testament to David’s skill as a director that an almost flawless film sits at number three on this list. The Henley Regatta sequence; Rooney Mara’s minor but impeccable two-scene appearance; every syllable that comes out of Jesse Eisenberg’s mouth; the gentle piano that blankets the film.
While David’s direction is a huge reason why The Social Network is so special, it’s Aaron Sorkin’s script that makes the film sing. Honestly, has anything ever been more devastating than Erica Albright’s “It’ll be because you’re an asshole” monologue? Probably not.
2. Zodiac (2007)
David’s quiet, oft-overlooked masterpiece deserves far more adoration than it currently receives. Focusing on the manhunt for the Zodiac Killer, the director displays the boldness and restraint we’ve come to expect from, pulling you into a whirlpool of suspicion, half-truths and suppositions. It’s a film about information and code-breaking as much as it is about the acts of a murderer. Somehow even in not revealing the murderer at the end of this murder mystery – the Zodiac killer has never been found – the movie makes its own open-ended anxiety into a strength, rather than a weakness.
1. Se7en (1995)
Oppressive in its bleakness, dark in its visuals, disturbing in its violence — Seven (or Se7en if you’re one of those people) shouldn’t have been a hit, nor resonated with audiences, but it did. In perfectly blending the crime, mystery and thriller genres, Seven meditates on evil in a way few films have: the mindless of it, the lack of any true understanding we have as onlookers. As an audience, we’re robbed of the satisfaction of any good guys winning, as even the pyrrhic victory of John Doe’s (Kevin Spacey) demise comes with too great a cost. One of the all-time great films, featuring what may be the all-time greatest twist ending. A masterpiece.