Killers, Sickos, and Zuckerberg: Ranking the Films of David Fincher

For nearly three decades, David Fincher has given us iconic and memorable films, ranging from a divisive sequel of a beloved sci-fi franchise to thrilling murder mysteries to a fantasy love story about a man who ages backward. He has been regarded as a true master behind the camera, understanding cinematic language as well as any director in Hollywood. He is also one of the most demanding directors out there, doing any number of takes from 20 to 50 to 100 in order to get the shot right and the right performance out of his actors. Though these standards might seem extreme, almost everyone who has worked with Fincher has had only compliments about his process, and we viewers have been rewarded with consistently compelling watches.

David Fincher’s films can range from Oscar-nominated dramas to pulpy thrillers that could double as paperback novels you would find at an airport kiosk. But with each film, Fincher shows that he is a technical and exacting wizard behind the camera. While often criticized for being cold and distancing, Fincher’s films almost always feature quick, smart humor and themes of alienation, obsession, greed, time, and dehumanizing modern culture. Here is my ranking of every David Fincher film.

12. Alien3 (1992)

Following Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens, two masterpieces of the sci-fi genre, David Fincher made his directorial debut with Alien3. Following two masterpieces was a tough enough task, but the troubled shoot made it even worse. Constant script changes, studio interference, reshoots, crew replacements, and different cuts of the film eventually all but took the film away from Fincher.

Though nowhere near as good as Alien and Aliens, Alien3 is still a very interesting watch that keeps in the same vein as the first two films while showing some flashes of genius that we would see from Fincher later in his career. Not knowing what Fincher could have done with this movie given full power and final cut is one of the great cinematic mysteries there is.

11. The Game (1997)

The Game is a strange movie, but a really entertaining one. Following the success of Se7en, Fincher created a twisted, thrilling look at a man (Michael Douglas, in one of the best performances of his career) who agrees to participate in a mysterious game for his birthday and has his life turned upside down when he becomes unable to distinguish between the game and reality.

What’s great about The Game is you never know where it is going. You think it’s going left, then it twists you right and quickly back left again. And good luck predicting the ending, because it’s insane and shocking, yet incredibly not the wildest ending of Fincher’s career. Though thought of as lesser Fincher, The Game is one of the director’s most interesting efforts.

10. Mank (2020)

Mank might seem like a very different film in the Fincher arsenal, but it has his name and aesthetic all over it. Mank looks at screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman, worthy of his Oscar nomination) and his journey in writing what many consider to be the greatest film ever made, Citizen Kane. Mank has a great script written by Fincher’s late father, Jack Fincher, and a gorgeous black-and-white classic Hollywood look. It is a layered, fascinating look at a troubled artist alienated by the Hollywood system and the creative process.

9. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was Fincher’s first major Oscar player. After over a decade of being behind the camera to constant critical acclaim, Fincher’s movies barely got recognized by the Academy. But in 2008, Fincher made a film that was right in the Academy’s wheelhouse, being nominated for thirteen Oscars and winning three.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has the most heart and emotion out of all of Fincher’s films. It is a life-spanning love story about meeting the right person under the wrong circumstances. Fincher pushed the technological landscape with the aging and de-aging technology used on Pitt and it is one of Fincher’s best-looking movies on a cinematography level. The film’s framing device, of a woman reading her mother’s diary in a hospital room during Hurricane Katrina and using flashbacks to the diary entries, is the film’s biggest flaw, and if it were not used it would have helped alleviate the runtime, which is a bit long and drags.

8. Panic Room (2002)

Panic Room is a fun little thriller yet is probably Fincher’s most forgotten film. Jodie Foster stars in the film as a woman who hides in her new home’s safe room with her daughter (a young Kristen Stewart) while a trio of men (Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, Dwight Yoakam) break-in in search of a missing fortune.

Panic Room is tense and thrilling and shows Fincher working on a relatively smaller, tighter scale, Though it takes place in mostly one location, Fincher’s visual flair is the star of the film and we start to see how his utilization of digital filmmaking, which helped with some cool shots like running through the walls and pipes. While it might not leave as much of a lasting impression as other Fincher films, Panic Room is still a blast to watch twenty years later.

7. Fight Club (1999)

There’s been a lot that has been said about Fight Club, Fincher’s hyper-violent satire on masculinity and consumerism that shook the cinematic landscape back in 1999, so it’s hard to say anything original about it. This movie is great and really established Fincher as a powerhouse director. Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham Carter all give incredible performances and the movie pulsates with energy and life thanks to great cinematography and quick editing.

While being a landmark film in the legendary film year of 1999, the general ideas and attitudes of Fight Club feel very of its time and haven’t translated well to 2023. The film’s twist is blatantly obvious once you know what it is and the second half of the film isn’t nearly as good as the first half.

Still, this is the movie Fincher will forever be remembered for and the film that solidified him as one of the best directors in Hollywood.

6. The Killer (1997)

The Killer is a slick and electric movie about a seasoned and meticulous hitman (a stellar Michael Fassbender) who is sent on a mission in Paris, only for it to go awry. This sends him on a globe-trotting journey to battle his employers and everyone involved in the mission in order to clean up his mess while not letting emotion get in the way.

It almost felt like Fincher made a movie about himself with The Killer. Not that Fincher was an assassin in a past life, but because it is a movie about a tactical master and the lengths they will go the make something right without letting emotion get in the way, similar to how many people perceive Fincher as a cold, calculated master behind the camera who will push everyone around him to make the best film he can possibly make. Fincher once again shows that he can take pulpy material and turn it into something incredibly entertaining and cinematically stunning.

5. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Coming in hot off a best-selling novel and a critically acclaimed foreign film, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was bound for an American adaptation. Fincher was the perfect choice for this remake, about a journalist, Mikael Blomkvist (a terrific Daniel Craig), who is aided in his search for a woman who has been missing for forty years by Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara, in a legendary performance), a young computer hacker.

This was Fincher’s darkest and most violent film since Se7en, featuring some truly brutal moments that will make you wince and squirm in your seat. Yet he never loses track of the chilling mystery at the center of the film, and the ending of the film hits like a ton of bricks. It’s a shame Fincher was never able to turn this into a franchise with Mara at the center.

4. Se7en (1995)

Following the troubled production of Alien3, Fincher bounced back in a huge way with Se7en. This is a grisly police thriller about two detectives (Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt) who are trying to solve a series of murders based on the seven deadly sins. Fincher showed his understanding of tone and mood here, making a dark, rainy neo-noir that will scare the hell out of you. All the terror and suspense lead up to one of the greatest endings in cinematic history, permanently cementing Fincher as a voice to be reckoned with as a director.

3. Gone Girl (2014)

Gone Girl is another David Fincher mystery film that he executes to perfection. Based on the best-selling novel by Gillian Flynn (who also wrote the screenplay), the film follows Nick Dunne (a perfectly cast Ben Affleck whose wife, Amy Dunne (Oscar nominee Rosamund Pike) goes missing and nobody knows where she could be. Was she kidnapped? Murdered? Nobody knows and Fincher keeps us on our toes the whole time, twisting and turning the narrative until the final moments.

Gone Girl is the funniest and most biting film in David Fincher’s filmography. He looks at the dishonesty of the media and how they constantly flip their opinions back-and-forth while also painting a portrait of someone without knowing all the details, modern upper-class marriages and the darkness behind the picturesque relationship, and the perception of people based on their actions.

2. The Social Network (2010)

Adapted from the book The Accidental Billionaires, The Social Network looks at Mark Zuckerberg (a brilliant Jesse Eisenberg), the creation of Facebook, and the court cases that followed. While the film looks at the creation of the biggest social media platform in the world, Fincher doesn’t let up on the darkness of the story, showing how one man’s obsession with trying to be cool and fit in ultimately alienates everyone close to him.

Fincher’s direction is as precise and perfect as ever and the film is full of technical brilliance. Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay is sublime, crackling off the screen with whip-fast dialog and a smart structure to show us this story from all angles. Though it came out over a decade ago, The Social Network is even more relevant today than ever because of the world’s obsession with social media and how it affects our lives.

1. Zodiac (2007)

Zodiac is an outstanding achievement. A chilling procedural about the search for the Zodiac Killer in San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s, something Fincher was quite familiar with as someone who grew up in the Bay Area, it’s a sprawling, nearly three-hour-long film that covers decades of time and events, all of which culminate in a mystery that is never officially solved. Fincher shows all the nuances of police work and the ins and outs of investigative journalism. It features arguably the best ensemble of Fincher’s career with actors like Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Chloë Sevigny, Elias Koteas, Brian Cox, and John Carroll Lynch all giving top-tier performances.

It was a true battle for the number one spot between The Social Network and Zodiac. I think both films are incredible and two of the best movies of the 21st century. If you ask me tomorrow which I would place at number one, the answer might change. But Zodiac is the definitive David Fincher movie. It is Fincher working at the height of his powers and his direction has never been better. Every shot, every cut, every performance, every second of the movie is perfect. It is a terrifying thriller with a murdering sicko at the center, a true crime story, a fascinating newspaper story, a look at obsession and how it affects people and those around them, and a technical masterclass. Zodiac is a towering masterpiece and the best David Fincher movie.

David Fincher makes movies about sickos, loners, and weirdos and he does it with style, precision, and an eye for detail. He is one of my favorite directors of all time and, in my opinion, has never made a bad film.