The Silence of the Lambs influenced Seven

Seven exists in the space Demme's film opened four years earlier, and the commercial fact is part of the claim: a serial killer procedural could be a prestige picture with stars in it, which was not obvious before 1991. The structural borrowing is the killer as an intelligence to be interpreted rather than chased, whose design is revealed by reading his work. Fincher's departure is the ending. Demme lets Clarice win.