The Word Made Flesh: Viscerality and Textuality in David Fincher's 'Se7en'

On leaving the cinema, leaving David Fincher's film Seven (1996) behind me, first reactions are physical and direct: I want to scrub myself down, wash my mouth out, remove a sheen of slime and muck and dirt, a miasma of filth that seems to cling to my body. One can say that the experience has quite literally left a bad taste in my mouth.