31 years later, David Fincher's Se7en is still one of the most disturbing and defining serial killer thrillers of the 1990s. The movie follows detectives William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and David Mills (Brad Pitt) as they investigate a string of gruesome murders, eventually learning that each victim has been chosen to represent one of the seven deadly sins. The perpetrator, John Doe, has constructed an elaborate message and forced the detectives to follow it until they become a part of the plan themselves, with the famous "What's in the box?" twist ending.

The combination of relentless killer, grisly crimes, and clues that mean far more than they initially appear is difficult to replicate, and only a few thrillers have managed to match the dark, bleak intensity of David Fincher's masterpiece. However, anyone looking for another mystery that has some of Se7en's DNA should look to a book released just one year later: Michael Connelly's The Poet. The novel's central case unfolds very differently, but it delivers another disturbing hunt for a killer whose crimes are pieces of a much larger puzzle, and it also boasts an equally great twist.

From Heat's brutal violence to Se7en's dark subject matter, these are the best R-rated thrillers ever made.

Before becoming famous for books like The Lincoln Lawyer, Michael Connelly had already established himself through his Harry Bosch novels when he published The Poet in 1996. Rather than putting another police detective at the center of the story, however, The Poet focuses on Jack McEvoy, a crime reporter for the Rocky Mountain News who has made a career from writing about death.

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