A Critical Companion to David Fincher

Book excerpt: The thirteen chapters in this collection analyze David Fincher’s development as a filmmaker, from television commercials and music videos to serving as front runner on the series Mindhunter. The contributors explore a variety of characteristics, including Fincher’s attitudes toward his audiences, his attention to detail, his Gothic sense of evil, his modernization of film noir, and his reinvention of the serial killer. The diversity of approaches highlights the paradoxes of Fincher’s films and style, accentuating the tensions between his innovative methods and storytelling and unpacking the perennial questions of love, life, and death that his films raise. Scholars of film, television, and media will find this book especially salient.