David Fincher recap: the story so far

No. 01 · 1992 · Film

Alien 3 recap

A fire aboard the Sulaco ejects the hypersleep pod, which crashes on Fiorina 161, a foundry prison planet for violent male inmates who have found religion. Ripley is the only survivor: Hicks and Newt are dead and Bishop is wrecked. A facehugger came with them, and a creature soon bursts from a dog and kills inmates. The prison doctor, Clemens, takes Ripley's side and sleeps with her, but the alien kills him. The inmates, led by the preacher Dillon, have no weapons, and the company says it is sending a rescue ship. The alien spares Ripley, and she discovers why: she has an Alien Queen embryo growing inside her. She asks Dillon to kill her, but first the prisoners must kill the creature.

How Alien 3 ends

The prisoners lure the alien into a mould and pour molten lead on it, and Ripley finishes it with cold water. The Weyland-Yutani team arrives, led by a man who looks like Bishop and claims to be his creator, offering to remove the embryo. Ripley refuses and falls backward into the furnace, holding the Queen as it bursts from her chest. The only surviving prisoner is taken away.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 02 · 1995 · Film

Se7en recap

Se7en (1995) follows two detectives in a rain-soaked, unnamed city as they hunt a serial killer who stages each murder as one of the seven deadly sins. David Fincher directs from Andrew Kevin Walker's script. Morgan Freeman plays Detective Lieutenant William Somerset, a week from retirement, and Brad Pitt plays David Mills, the hot-headed young detective who has just transferred in with his wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow). The first victim, an obese man, has been forced to eat until he died, with "gluttony" written on the wall; a lawyer is killed for greed, and a drug dealer is found strapped to a bed for exactly a year as sloth. Tracy, unhappy in the city, confides in Somerset that she is pregnant. Library records lead the detectives to the apartment of a man known as John Doe, who escapes after nearly killing Mills, leaving behind thousands of notebooks. Lust and pride victims follow. Then Doe, played by Kevin Spacey, walks into the station covered in blood and surrenders. It is Fincher's second feature, after Alien 3 and before The Game.

How Se7en ends

Se7en ends in the desert outside the city, where John Doe has promised to lead the detectives to his last two victims. A van delivers a box, and Somerset opens it and finds Tracy's head. Doe says he envied Mills's life, making himself envy, and taunts him that Tracy begged for the baby Mills never knew about. Mills shoots Doe dead, completing wrath. As Mills is driven away, Somerset says he will be around, quoting Hemingway that the world is worth fighting for and agreeing only with that part.

Post-credits scenes

No. Se7en has no mid- or post-credits scene, though its end credits famously scroll down the screen instead of up.

No. 03 · 1997 · Film

The Game recap

The Game (1997) follows Nicholas Van Orton, a San Francisco banker whose brother gives him a strange birthday present: a live game that takes over his life. David Fincher directs. Michael Douglas plays Nicholas, who is turning 48, the age at which his father jumped from the roof of the family mansion. Sean Penn plays his younger brother Conrad, who gives him a voucher from Consumer Recreation Services. Nicholas takes hours of tests at the company's office, then is told he has been turned down. That night a clown dummy turns up in his driveway and a newsreader on his TV starts talking to him. Small humiliations escalate into real danger. He meets Christine (Deborah Kara Unger), a waitress who is part of the game, is chased by dogs, and ends up in a taxi rolling into the bay. Conrad claims CRS is after him too, and Nicholas begins to suspect the company is a front for stealing his fortune. The Game is Fincher's third feature, made between Se7en and Fight Club.

How The Game ends

The Game ends with Nicholas, robbed, dumped in a Mexican cemetery and believing his money gone, forcing his way into the real CRS offices and taking Christine hostage on the roof. She insists it is all still the game. When the door opens he shoots the first man through it, Conrad, carrying champagne, and in horror jumps off the building, only to land on an air bag in a ballroom where his birthday party is waiting. Conrad is alive. Christine, whose real name is Claire, invites him for coffee.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Game has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 04 · 1999 · Film

Fight Club recap

Fight Club (1999) follows an unnamed insomniac office worker who falls in with Tyler Durden, a soap salesman who preaches freedom through fighting. David Fincher directs from Jim Uhls's adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 novel. Edward Norton plays the Narrator, an insurance investigator who calms his insomnia by posing as a sufferer at support groups, until another impostor, Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), ruins it for him. After his condo explodes, he moves into Tyler's (Brad Pitt) decaying house, and a parking lot brawl between them grows into an underground fight club for men. Tyler sleeps with Marla, which the Narrator resents. He blackmails his boss, quits his job, and watches the club turn into Project Mayhem, a nationwide group of Tyler's followers who shave their heads and carry out vandalism against corporations. When the police kill his friend Bob Paulsen (Meat Loaf) during a mission, the Narrator sets out to stop Tyler. Fight Club is Fincher's fourth feature, after The Game and before Panic Room.

How Fight Club ends

Fight Club ends with the reveal that Tyler is the Narrator's other personality, active while he thinks he is asleep. Tyler's plan is to blow up the headquarters of credit card companies and erase the debt record. Unable to stop it through the police, who belong to Project Mayhem, the Narrator puts a gun in his own mouth and shoots through his cheek, which makes Tyler vanish. He takes Marla's hand as the towers collapse outside the window. In the novel, the bombs fail and the Narrator wakes up in a mental hospital.

Post-credits scenes

No. Fight Club has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 05 · 2002 · Film

Panic Room recap

Panic Room (2002) follows Meg Altman and her daughter, who hide in a steel safe room when burglars break into their new Manhattan brownstone. David Fincher directs from David Koepp's script. Jodie Foster plays Meg, recently divorced, and Kristen Stewart plays her 11-year-old daughter Sarah, who has diabetes. The house belonged to a reclusive millionaire whose hidden fortune sits in a floor safe inside the panic room itself. Three men come for it: Junior (Jared Leto), the dead owner's grandson; Burnham (Forest Whitaker), who installs panic rooms for a security company; and Raoul (Dwight Yoakam), a masked gunman Junior brought without telling Burnham. The burglars pump propane into the vents and Meg ignites it, burning Junior. She calls her ex-husband Stephen (Patrick Bauchau) before the line is cut, and Raoul kills Junior when he tries to quit. Stephen arrives and is beaten, and Sarah has a seizure while her glucagon is stuck in her bedroom. It is Fincher's fifth feature, between Fight Club and Zodiac.

How Panic Room ends

Panic Room ends with Burnham saving Meg. When Meg leaves the room for Sarah's medicine, the men slip inside with Sarah, and Burnham gives her the injection. Meg tricks two police officers into leaving to protect Sarah. As the men escape with the bonds, Meg attacks Raoul with a sledgehammer; when Raoul gets the upper hand, Burnham comes back and shoots him. The returning police arrest Burnham and the bonds blow away in the wind. Days later Meg and Sarah sit in a park reading listings for a smaller home.

Post-credits scenes

No. Panic Room has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 06 · 2007 · Film

Zodiac recap

Zodiac (2007) follows a cartoonist, a reporter and two detectives through years of failing to identify the Zodiac Killer in the San Francisco Bay Area. David Fincher directs from James Vanderbilt's script, based on Robert Graysmith's books. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Graysmith, a political cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle who becomes fixated on the coded letters the killer sends to the paper. Robert Downey Jr. plays Paul Avery, the Chronicle's crime reporter, and Mark Ruffalo plays Inspector Dave Toschi, with his partner Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards). The killer shoots a couple at a lovers' lane in Vallejo, stabs two people at Lake Berryessa and shoots cabdriver Paul Stine in San Francisco, mailing pieces of Stine's shirt to the paper. Toschi grows convinced the killer is Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch), but handwriting and fingerprints do not match. Avery sinks into drink after Zodiac threatens him. Graysmith keeps digging for years, losing his job and his marriage. It is Fincher's sixth feature, after Panic Room and before The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

How Zodiac ends

Zodiac ends without an arrest. In 1983 Graysmith tracks Arthur Leigh Allen to the hardware store where he works, and the two stare at each other in silence before Graysmith walks out. In 1991 Mike Mageau, the survivor of the first attack, picks Allen out of a photo lineup. Closing text says Allen died of a heart attack in 1992 before he could be charged, that a later DNA test on the letters did not match him, and that the case remains open.

Post-credits scenes

No. Zodiac has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 07 · 2008 · Film

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button recap

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) follows a man born with the body of an old man in New Orleans in 1918, who grows younger as the decades pass. David Fincher directs from Eric Roth's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1922 short story, framed in 2005 by a dying woman whose daughter reads her his diary. Brad Pitt plays Benjamin Button, abandoned at birth by his father Thomas (Jason Flemyng) on the steps of a nursing home, where a caretaker named Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) raises him. Cate Blanchett plays Daisy, who meets Benjamin as a child visiting her grandmother and becomes the love of his life. Benjamin works on a tugboat, has an affair in Russia with Elizabeth Abbott (Tilda Swinton), and survives a U-boat attack in the war. He and Daisy keep missing each other until, in the 1960s, they meet in the middle of their ages and have a daughter. Julia Ormond plays Caroline, Daisy's daughter, who learns the story is her own. It is Fincher's seventh feature, between Zodiac and The Social Network.

How The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ends

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ends with Benjamin dying as an infant in Daisy's arms in 2003. Fearing he will be a child to his own daughter, he left Daisy and Caroline, and when he returns years later he is a young man. In his last years social workers find him, physically a boy with dementia, and Daisy moves into the old nursing home to care for him. Caroline learns that Benjamin was her father. Daisy dies as Katrina's floods reach a storeroom where the old backward-running station clock keeps ticking.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 08 · 2010 · Film

The Social Network recap

The Social Network (2010) follows Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg as he builds Facebook in 2003 and 2004 and is sued by the people who say he cheated them. David Fincher directs from Aaron Sorkin's script, based on Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires. Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark, Andrew Garfield plays his best friend and co-founder Eduardo Saverin, Justin Timberlake plays Napster co-founder Sean Parker, and Armie Hammer plays the twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. After his girlfriend Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) dumps him, Mark builds a site rating female students that crashes Harvard's network. The Winklevosses and their partner Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) hire him to build their social site, but Mark stalls them and launches TheFacebook with Eduardo's money. Parker charms Mark with a vision of a billion-dollar company and moves him to Palo Alto, pushing Eduardo out. The story is told through two legal depositions. The film won Oscars for the screenplay, score and editing. It is Fincher's eighth feature, following Benjamin Button and preceding The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

How The Social Network ends

The Social Network ends with Mark alone in the deposition room after a junior lawyer tells him they will settle, since a jury would not like him. Eduardo learns at the millionth-member party that his stake has been diluted from 34 percent to almost nothing, and is thrown out of the building. Parker is arrested at a party with cocaine. Mark sends Erica a friend request and keeps refreshing the page. Closing text says both suits were settled and that Mark became the world's youngest billionaire.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Social Network has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 09 · 2011 · Film

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo recap

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) follows a disgraced Swedish journalist and a young hacker hunting the truth behind a 40-year-old disappearance. David Fincher directs from Steven Zaillian's adaptation of Stieg Larsson's 2005 novel. Daniel Craig plays Mikael Blomkvist, who has just lost a libel case to the financier Hans-Erik Wennerstrom. Rooney Mara plays Lisbeth Salander, a researcher and hacker under state guardianship. The aging industrialist Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) hires Mikael to find out who killed his grandniece Harriet 40 years earlier, promising dirt on Wennerstrom in return. Mikael moves to the family's island, full of Vanger relatives, some of them former Nazis. Lisbeth's new guardian, Nils Bjurman, rapes her; she takes revenge, blackmails him and tattoos his crime on his body. Mikael hires her, and she links a list in Harriet's datebook to murders of women across Sweden from 1947 to 1967. Stellan Skarsgard plays Martin Vanger, Harriet's brother and head of the company. It is Fincher's ninth feature, between The Social Network and Gone Girl.

How The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ends

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ends with Lisbeth turning away from Mikael. Martin traps Mikael in his basement and boasts of killing women like his father did; Lisbeth saves Mikael and chases Martin, who dies when his car crashes and burns. Harriet is alive in London, living as her cousin Anita, having fled her abusive brother. Lisbeth hacks Wennerstrom, ruins him and steals his fortune. She buys Mikael a gift, sees him with his lover Erika, and throws it away. The planned sequels were never made, and in the novel Harriet hides in Australia.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 10 · 2014 · Film

Gone Girl recap

Gone Girl (2014) follows Nick Dunne, a Missouri bar owner who becomes the chief suspect when his wife Amy vanishes on their fifth anniversary. David Fincher directs from Gillian Flynn's adaptation of her own 2012 novel. Ben Affleck plays Nick and Rosamund Pike plays Amy, whose parents made her famous as the model for their Amazing Amy children's books. Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) finds signs of a struggle and evidence of debts and a gun purchase, and the press turns on Nick when it emerges that Amy was pregnant and he was having an affair with a student. Amy's diary describes her fear of him. Halfway through, the film reveals that Amy is alive and has framed Nick for her murder, planting every clue. Nick hires celebrity lawyer Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry), while his twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon) stands by him. Amy, robbed at the campground where she is hiding, turns to her wealthy old flame Desi Collings (Neil Patrick Harris). It is Fincher's tenth feature, after The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

How Gone Girl ends

Gone Girl ends with Nick trapped in his marriage. Watching him win sympathy on TV, Amy stages her own kidnapping and rape by Desi, kills him and comes home covered in his blood, clearing Nick. Nick, Boney and Bolt know what she did but cannot prove it. Amy reveals she is pregnant using Nick's sperm from a fertility clinic, and Nick stays for the child. The couple announces the pregnancy on television. Flynn, adapting her own book, kept its ending.

Post-credits scenes

No. Gone Girl has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 11 · 2017 · Series

Mindhunter recap

Mindhunter (2017) follows two FBI agents and a psychologist who interview imprisoned serial killers in the late 1970s to learn how they think. Created by Joe Penhall from the book by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker, it ran on Netflix for two seasons from 2017 to 2019, with 19 episodes (10 and 9). David Fincher directed several episodes and ran the show in practice. Jonathan Groff plays Holden Ford, a young hostage negotiator turned instructor, and Holt McCallany plays Bill Tench, a veteran agent who teaches criminology to police around the country. Anna Torv plays Dr. Wendy Carr, a Boston University psychologist who helps turn their work into the Behavioral Science Unit. Season 1, set from 1977 to 1980, centers on their talks with Ed Kemper (Cameron Britton) and others such as Jerry Brudos and Richard Speck, while Holden grows arrogant. Season 2, in 1980 and 1981, sends them to Atlanta, where at least 28 people, most of them Black children, have been murdered, and adds talks with David Berkowitz and Charles Manson. Each season opens with brief scenes of Dennis Rader, the BTK killer. Mindhunter sits between Gone Girl and Mank in Fincher's work.

How Mindhunter ends

Mindhunter ends with season 2's finale, "Episode 9", in which Wayne Williams is convicted of killing two adult men and Atlanta officials pin most of the child murders on him to close them, over Holden's objections. Bill comes home to find his wife Nancy has left with their son Brian. Season 1 had ended with Holden suffering a panic attack after Ed Kemper hugged him in a hospital. Netflix put the show on hold in 2020 and Fincher confirmed in 2023 that it is over, leaving the BTK story unfinished.

No. 12 · 2020 · Film

Mank recap

Mank (2020) follows screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz as he races to write Citizen Kane in 1940, with flashbacks to 1930s Hollywood. David Fincher directs from a script by his late father, Jack Fincher, shot in black and white. Gary Oldman plays Mank, a witty alcoholic laid up after a car crash, who dictates to his secretary Rita Alexander (Lily Collins) at a ranch in Victorville, under a tight deadline from Orson Welles (Tom Burke). The flashbacks show how he came to know the newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) and his partner, the actress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), through MGM and its boss Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard). In 1934 the studio makes fake newsreels to defeat Upton Sinclair's socialist run for governor, and a director who made them later kills himself. Mank's brother Joseph (Tom Pelphrey) warns him that the script will enrage Hearst. Released by Netflix, it is Fincher's eleventh feature, after Mindhunter and before The Killer.

How Mank ends

Mank ends with Herman refusing to give up credit for the script. Marion asks him to soften it, and he will not. Welles offers him money to stay uncredited, but Herman, who had agreed to that in his contract, now demands his name on it, and Welles storms off. A flashback shows Herman, drunk, insulting Hearst at a party, and Hearst throwing him out with a story about a monkey and an organ grinder. Mankiewicz and Welles share the Oscar for the screenplay.

Post-credits scenes

No. Mank has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 13 · 2023 · Film

The Killer recap

The Killer (2023) follows a meticulous hitman who misses a shot in Paris and then hunts down everyone sent to punish him for it. David Fincher directs from Andrew Kevin Walker's adaptation of the French graphic novel series by Alexis "Matz" Nolent and Luc Jacamon. Michael Fassbender plays the unnamed Killer, who narrates his rules, does yoga and listens only to the Smiths while he waits days for his target. When a dominatrix moves into the path of his bullet, he kills her instead and has to flee. At his home in the Dominican Republic, he finds that two assassins have beaten his girlfriend Magdala (Sophie Charlotte) nearly to death. He works through the chain: his handler, the lawyer Hodges (Charles Parnell), and Hodges's assistant Dolores (Kerry O'Malley), then "the Brute" in Florida and "the Expert" (Tilda Swinton) in New York, before reaching the client in Chicago. It premiered at Venice and was released by Netflix. It is Fincher's twelfth feature and the latest in this list, after Mank.

How The Killer ends

The Killer ends with the Killer in Chicago facing Claybourne (Arliss Howard), the billionaire who hired him. Claybourne says he simply paid Hodges extra to clean up the mess and meant nothing personal. The Killer spares him but warns him he will die slowly if he ever comes looking. Before that, the Expert shares a final whiskey with him and is shot when she reaches for a knife. He returns to the Dominican Republic and sits beside the recovering Magdala.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Killer has no mid- or post-credits scene.