I am 100% on Team Amy here because I think Se7en is a pretty half-assed movie, in large part because it's script and director are so mismatched.
Let's be honest: Se7en's script is goofy. It takes the cheesy premise of the Vincent Price movie the Abominable Dr. Phibes and then layers on top a bunch of "shocking" details that are meant to be gruesome but just come across as juvenile. All of John Doe's convoluted murders are so intricate that they are utterly implausible - which I could forgive if their lavish extremity served a purpose. Unfortunately, they just feel like an excuse to let a frustrated young writer vent his spleen at the world. It drives me crazy how this movie pretends as if Doe's punishment-fits-the-crime scheme is deep even though it actually displays a third grade understanding of irony.
And that's before you get into the cliched "rookie cop teams up with grizzled cynic cop" stuff which has always been the most frustrating part of this movie to me. Both Somerset and Mills are thinly drawn caricatures of cops that only work to the extant that they do because Freeman and Pitt are the sort of actors who can invest real humanity into such stock characters.
I could probably tolerate the script's weaker elements if Se7en had been directed with a hint of self-awareness, but David Fincher isn't the type to wink at his audience. He wants to create an overwhelming atmosphere, one that really hammers home how gloomy and hopeless the world is, and as such he won't let himself step back for a second and acknowledge how far-fetched the whole thing is. He treats the whole thing as if it was mind-blowing but the movie's overwrought premise isn't built to carry all the seriousness he wants to inject into it.
Se7en could have been a great movie. If this script had been directed by a less competent director it would have ended up being silly, which means that it could have been fun instead of being a self-serious slog. Or if Fincher had directed a smarter script then Se7en would have worked as intended instead of feeling like the pettiest fantasies of an angsty nerd come to life. But alas, we got a ridiculous script being delivered by a man who doesn't seem to understand just how ridiculous his material is, leaving us with a mess that isn't worth suspending our disbelief for.
Like I said: half assed.
