Every David Fincher Killer, Definitively Ranked

Photographs: Everett Collection, Getty Images; Collage: Gabe Conte

David Fincher is a rare breed of chameleonic auteur. In the past 40 years, he's directed music videos, commercials, feature films, and television series, all of which keep garnering more cultural importance, either immediately or in retrospect (hey, look, David Fincher directed a 1987 video for a single from a random Philly bar rock band!) Fincher is known for his technical prowess, his “impossible eye,” and his pioneering mastery of digital technology. He’s made love letters to old Hollywood, ripped-from-the-headlines tech-industry autopsies that render depositions as white-knuckle suspense, and popcorn home-invasion flicks. He’s taken turns at IP-franchise stewardship, adapted bestselling airport paperbacks, and told the oddly touching story of a mild-mannered, even-tempered gentleman from New Orleans who ages backwards. But if Fincher has a career throughline, a raison d’etre, it’s his pursuit and depiction of killers—a focus made quite overt in The Killer, a fascinating and highly meta film which hits Netflix Friday after a limited theatrical run over the past two weeks.

In Fincher's films, killers—particularly serial killers—provide an extreme window into human nature. They are symptoms of a sick society, prophets, self-appointed Gods and monsters, blank canvases for us to project our conspiracies and insecurities onto, or would-be celebrities killing for attention from a sensation-hungry media that's all too happy to give it to them. In the pale light of day or the fluorescent light of a prison visiting area, they're often sad, awkward misfits who understand themselves and their actions even less than we do. But by necessity, they're also methodical people who must put a great deal of thought and care into their grisly work in order to continue working. In this way, Fincher sees them as the equivalent of process-mad directors, blocking their victims and staging their crime scenes before selling them to a confused but riveted public.

Time and time again, across his filmography, the image most associated with Fincher is the killer— or the hapless detectives pursuing them—shot from below, almost swallowed whole by a monochromatic backdrop that looms both far above and far behind them, dimly but immaculately lit, and bathed in shadow, inside Fincher's uncommonly steady, all-seeing and all-knowing frame. The killer’s maniacal focus, their certitude, is ours. The detective’s confusion—their understanding that they’re a step behind and a beat late, that they will never get the satisfying answers, the closure they’re looking for—is ours, too.

So for art, and for fun, let’s evaluate the many killers who've made Fincher's body of work as incredible and indelible as it is, based on a shifting, subjective equation of quality, efficacy, body count, and how they’re represented by the auteur himself.

21. The Narrator, Fight Club (1999)

Fight Club is a satire about bereft ineffectual masculinity, about neutered men crushed under Ikea catalogs, about eighth-grade-boy-level rebellion against materialism, capitalism, and every societal convention that places value on anything except chiseled abs, skinned knuckles, bullshit patter, and rugged individualism.

The “kill” here is committed by Edward Norton, as a character identified in the credits as “The Narrator” who murders Tyler Durden—his child, his liberator, his tormentor, and his imaginary friend—by, uh, shooting the side of his mouth, sort of? Somehow, the famously meticulous Fincher lands on a resolution that makes absolutely no sense according to the laws of physical interaction between The Narrator and Tyler Durden established within the rest of the film. Why does this apparition, who knows everything the narrator knows, and can punch The Narrator, can harm him physically without receiving the impact of those assaults, and can’t even be hit by The Narrator, die with his brains blown out as a result of his alter ego shooting off a chunk of his jaw? This is, hands down, the worst “kill” in the Fincher filmography.

20. The Random Guy Who Kills Madonna, “Bad Girl” (1993)

Fincher did his most important music video work for his muse and rumored paramour Madonna, who tapped him to direct videos for hits like “Vogue” and “Express Yourself.” But one of their less heralded collaborations was this bizarre minor work, a video (for a song from Erotica) that plays like a dumbed-down Wings of Desire. Madonna is a stressed-out high-achieving corporate type who unwinds by making bad and eventually fatal decisions. After her Bruno Ganz-like guardian angel (Christopher Walken) makes out with her, she pursues sex with a hookup who clearly intends to murder her. We only see the killer from Madonna's POV, and when he kills her it's presented as her choice, rather than the result of any kind of premeditated plot by the killer; he's more of a prop than a person.

19. Weyland-Yutani Employee, Alien³ (1992)

For a filmmaker who so regularly trades in death, Fincher has depicted shockingly few frivolous ones. Nearly every kill in his work is personal and meaningful. But this is an exception. Towards the end of Alien³ , a commando representing the wantonly evil corporation smokes Francis Aaron, one of the COs on the prison planet Ripley has crash-landed on. The scene underscores the cynical ruthlessness of the outfit, but ultimately it’s just a faceless grunt shooting a stranger.

18. The Security Guard, Fight Club (1999)

In the act of executing Operation Latte Thunder, an ingenious plan to weaponize a piece of corporate art mounted in an office park fountain to destroy a franchise coffee shop in the lobby of a nearby building, Robert Paulson (Meatloaf) is murdered by an extremely extra security guard, who shoots him in the head as he flees the scene of the crime. It’s another somewhat frivolous murder, but the fallout tells us a lot about Tyler Durden’s cult of personality and its effect on its dumbass followers.

17. Frank Underwood, House of Cards (2013-2018)

There are several killers from this groundbreaking, trashy Netflix politico soap you won’t see on this list. This is because the totality of Fincher’s involvement is unclear—he may have imprinted his filmic language on the entirety of the show's run, but he only directed the first two episodes (unlike Mindhunter, his second effort with Netflix, on which he directed seven of 19 episodes across two seasons.) But in the House of Cards pilot, in order to show us just what kind of devious, deliciously shitty archvillain Kevin Spacey's Francis Underwood is going to be, he gleefully, flagrantly bucks the old screenwriting maxim “Don't kill the dog”—and not for the first time—by having Frank strangle his pooch, which has been hit by a car.

16. Janie, “Janie’s Got A Gun” (1989)

The heroine of Aerosmith’s outlier conscious anthem reclaims her narrative by killing her rapist father. It’s an odd “message” song and an odd video, but both were groundbreaking and transgressive at the time. It’s a completely justified revenge killing that Fincher had to sell through suggestion to get played on MTV.

15. Lisbeth Salander, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Lisbeth (Rooney Mara) slaps the shit out of Martin Vanger (Stellan Skarsgård) with a long iron, then chases him down on her motorcycle as he attempts to flee in a Range Rover, causing him to crash and burn. When she cocks a gun and asks Daniel Craig’s Mikael Blomkvist, “May I kill him?” before lighting out after Vanger, devoid of emotion, it’s the most badass moment of a very badass film.

14. Ellen Ripley, Alien³ (1992)

Bald Sigourney Weaver kills the “Runner” xenomorph by setting off sprinklers after it jumps out of a river of molten lead, causing it to explode. Then—rather than allowing The Corporation to take a parasite chestburster out of her and potentially spare her life—she swan-dives backwards into the lead, killing herself and taking the alien with her—a sci-fi Joan of Arc.

13. Gottfried and Martin Vanger, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Playing the role of a sicko pervert hiding in plain sight is a stretch for Skarsgård; Martin Vanger is a second-generation killer who shits on his dad for putting up rookie numbers and has a whole secret sex dungeon in his basement where he’s presumably killed dozens of women. Sadly, we must deduct points because Martin ends up dying as a result of overlong monologuing, like a 70s Bond villain.

12. (Tie) Monte Rissell, Rose Barnwright/Frank Janderman/Benjamin Barnwright, Jerry Brudos, Dennis Rader, Richard Speck, Darrell Gene Devier, David Berkowitz, William Pierce Jr., William Henry Hance, Elmer Wayne Henley Jr., Charles “Tex” Watson, Charles Manson*, Paul Bateson, Wayne Bertram Williams, Mindhunter (2017-2019)

David Fincher’s great Netflix series, a history of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, takes place mainly in the aftermath of its serial-killer subjects' various sprees, so we see few dead bodies onscreen. But as it turns out, talking to killers in quiet rooms and delving into their psyches is just as sensational and disturbing as the graphically depicted comic-book corpses in Se7en. The show is two Feds tearing the cover off America and discovering a teeming morass of perverts beneath the floorboards, up to their necks in muck. What we discover—in this crucial chapter of what feels like a career-long attempt by Fincher to unmake Se7en and its godlike antagonist—is that a lot of these killers are dull, impulsive, mentally-ill misfits and outcasts.

11. Alcohol, Mank (2020)

“To support devices," cheers Herman Mankiewicz, after delivering the first draft of his masterpiece, Citizen Kane. In the biopic written by Fincher’s father, booze is the fuel that allows the screenwriter to write, but kills his career one painful, impolitic-outburst-filled social interaction at a time, before it finally kills him, too. Alcohol is the lubricant that powers Mank’s genius, even as it obfuscates that genius and speeds his demise. The bottle both makes him and unmakes him, like Popeye if spinach destroyed his liver. It’s a self-inflicted slow killer, which makes its work all the more painful and tragic to witness.

10. (Tie) Raoul & Burnham, Panic Room (2002)

In Fincher’s masterful and inventive “conventional” thriller, Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) domes spoiled, insufferable, cornrowed Junior (Jared Leto) when he tries to walk away from the robbery they're pulling. Later, Burnham (Forest Whittaker) sacrifices himself and $22 million in bearer bonds to kill Raoul and save the day. Hard to say which is more satisfying.

9. Tobacco, American Cancer Society Commercial (1985)

The Big Bang of Fincher’s career, when he transitioned from Industrial Light & Magic cameraman and matte photographer to auteur. His first effort was this commercial, made for just $7,000, which several television stations banned because it was too graphic and disturbing. We have to side with the networks on this one—it’s a truly horrifying ad, a nightmare vision of the Starchild puppet from 2001 as a fetus double-fisting darts in the womb. But it’s an impressive work of visceral agitprop, one that had the potential to reconfigure the way we thought about this deadly but fairly common behavior in the 80s.

8. The Killer, The Killer (2023)

In Fincher’s latest, Michael Fassbender plays the unnamed, titular assassin in a procedural that’s all process. He's a classic Fincher protagonist, a type-A creature of habit and ritual. The wrinkle is he kind of sucks at his job—or at least, when we meet him, has reached a point where he’s no longer able to execute his work according to the dispassionate code he lives and works by.

7. David Mills, Se7en (1995)

So, yes, he’s obviously baited into killing John Doe, and basically gets his wife killed by being an idiot and giving his name to her killer in an angry impulsive rush when John Doe is right next to him pretending to be a nosy reporter, and by giving into his emotions and impulses he’s throwing his life and his career away—but Mills ranks this high because of Pitt's incredible work in the tortured moments before Mills fulfills John Doe's master plan. It's an all-time great performance that's seared into your brain forever after you've watched it once.

6. The Xenomorph, Alien³ (1992)

Alien³ is Fincher’s canon event; the formatively traumatic experience of tangling with a cynical studio on his first feature made him the director he became. Having the film taken away from him taught Fincher the importance of demanding complete creative control. So it’s either ironic or brilliant that in many ways, this Xenomorph is a metaphor for the director, an alien antagonist (with the characteristics of a rabid dog!) resisting a sinister corporation that wants to cage and exploit him for its own evil purposes.

5. Time, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

In a movie about a guy born as an old man who ages in reverse, a byproduct of his disease is Benjamin (Brad Pitt) must “blend in”, experiencing his childhood in an old folks home where death is routine. Benjamin Button lives outside of time, breaks the rules of time, and in the process explains the ravages of time. Throughout the film we watch everyone around Benjamin die: From war, from old age, from disease, and finally, from being born in reverse. It contains the most stunning and heartbreaking kills in Fincher’s filmography because they are not a product of a sicko's grand design, but simply nature taking its course, harrowing in its obvious, matter of fact inevitability.

4. Edmund Kemper, Mindhunter (2017-2019)

The breakout star of Mindhunter, Edmund Kemper was the Co-Ed Killer—a hulking monster who killed many people and occasionally had sex with his victims' decapitated heads—and in the show, he’s the catalyst for the birth of the behavioral science unit. Cameron Britton plays Kemper as a verbose, precise, calmly menacing giant with thick frames and a trim mustache. He’s the most Fincheresque antagonist in the series. Kemper is lucid and clear-eyed, incisive, articulate, and occasionally even funny. Understanding what he’s done—and exactly why and how he did it— is critical to the protagonists' mission, and Kemper understands this, which makes him that much more terrifying.

3. Amy Dunne, Gone Girl (2014)

Another meticulous, disciplined Fincher avatar who has checked every box and arranged for every contingency. Amazing Amy is a feminist archvillain exploiting misogyny to liberate herself from the American prison of marriage and the cool-girl wife’s role therein. She’s a deeply petty scorned woman of iron will, expert at manipulating the public, the authorities, staged crime scenes, and her husband.

2. John Doe, Se7en (1995)

The film, and the killer, that has in many ways defined Fincher. Speaking to Esquire, before releasing Zodiac, the director said, “I don’t want to make a film serial killers masturbate to.” The line was an obvious dig at his own second feature, which is pure serial-killer porn and would set the template countless lesser movies would aspire to going forward. John Doe is a true mastermind who executes creative, horrific, gimmicky murders inspired by the Bible's deadly sins. But most importantly, he’s always a step ahead, always smarter than the cops coming after him, and his win at the end is absolute. Morgan Freeman’s terrified exclamation at the film's climax sums up the plot of the whole film: “John Doe has the upper hand!”

1. “The Zodiac Killer”, Zodiac (2007)

In Fincher’s masterpiece of form and statement, he’s at the height of his powers, revisiting the serial killer as a “celebrated” cultural figure and a malignant expression of society, and what he comes back with is maddening emptiness. Instead of a running inner monologue, we’re given nothing—not even the killer's identity (or identities.) The first half is a painstakingly made and researched film, scrubbed of all romance and sentimentality, that comes as close as fiction can to mimicking the endless, mundane texture of reality. Then, the killer dissolves.

To Fincher, the Zodiac Killer isn't a person, but an idea, an unanswered question, an unresolvable puzzle. Although different actors show up playing people who might be the culprit, the Zodiac haunts the film mostly as an absent menace. Conflicting motivations and theories are thrown at the viewer and it’s impossible to sift what circumstantial evidence is real from bullshit. Some characters favor one suspect, some another, nothing ever adds up, and no one is ever proven conclusively right or wrong. Years pass, people fall in and out of life, they succumb to their demons. Only devastating, lonely obsession remains.

Originally Appeared on GQ