Rent Panic Room (2002)

Excellent Thriller - Panic Room review by GI

This is a tense, sharp crime thriller that it is hard to beat. Director David Fincher has created a wonderful film here with some innovative and exciting use of the camera, which goes into places that are very clever and exciting. Set almost entirely in a Manhattan townhouse the narrative never lets up and the plot is always surprising and keeps the story rattling along at a nerve wracking speed. Jodie Foster is Meg recently separated from her rich husband who moves into a new home with her diabetic daughter, Sarah (Kristen Stewart). The house has a 'panic room' hidden in the master bedroom. This is a secure room that the residents can hide in if they are attacked. On their first night in their new home three men break in (Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakem & Jared Leto) and Meg and Sarah hide inside the impenetrable panic room. Unfortunately what the three men are after happens to be inside that room and they have to devise a way to get Meg & Sarah to come out. For a story set in a confined space this is remarkably good and Foster is exceptional as the uptight and emotionally vulnerable woman who finds a steely resolve in fending off the three men. A really great film and one that I highly recommend if you've never seen it.

An unbelievably tense & gripping thriller, with outstanding performances & direction - Panic Room review by Timmy B

I first saw Panic Room 15+ years ago and remember being gripped by it's astounding cinematography (including multiple incredible camera moves & tracking shots, gliding around the townhouse as light as a feather,) as well as a multitude of incredible performances from Foster, Stewart, Whittaker ect, all flawlessly marshalled by David Fincher's perfect direction. I saw it had recently been remastered in 4K, so put it on my rental list. And in many ways it is as good as I remembered.

Meg (Foster) is in the middle of a messy & ugly divorce. When we first meet her, she is shopping for property around NYC with her precocious daughter Sarah (Stewart,) buying close to her ex-husband due to shared custody. She is shown a massive multi-floored townhouse which has a unique addition: a panic room which enables the occupants to shelter inside, completely cut off from the outside world. On their first night after moving in, a trio of burglars break in, determined to access something inside the panic room. A frantic game of cat-and-mouse then ensues after Meg & Sarah manage to take refuse inside the panic room...

As much as this film has an excellent script and performances, for me the production values are the biggest star here. Every single element of that is perfect. The sets, lighting, cinematography, sound, literally everything is exactly what you'd expect from a Fincher film: flawless perfection. As mentioned earlier, the camera is effectively another character, following the action, going through walls and doors, with no limit on its reach.

Performance-wise, Foster is given yet another incredibly strong female character to inhabit. From the opening shots of her trying to hold her life together after the break-up from hell and crying silently in the bathroom, through to her metamorphosis as an unstoppable & avenging mother, she is amazing. Stewart, in one of her 1st roles, matches her toe-to-toe, never for one second making Sarah the sort of hideous, foot-stamping brat that it could so easily have become. The pairing of them is outstanding casting. Similar kudos must go to Whittaker & Yoakam.

One of the best parts of the film is the ingenuity & thinking of both Meg and Sarah, as well as the burglars. The script allows for plenty of moments of lateral thinking, as well as giving the intruders a large amount of common sense, again something that is rare in Hollywood productions (I have lost count of the number of supposedly intelligent/experienced characters who act so stupid you wonder how they dress themselves.) There is also a nerve-wracking montage when one of the characters suffers a medical emergency.

The only real fly in the ointment is Jared Leto. As much as Junior is written as an immature & feckless idiot who thinks he can run the show despite being massively out of his depth, Leto makes him both unrealistic & extremely irritating. It is a moot point on an otherwise incredibly gripping film.

Alongside the rug pulls and double-crosses, the ending manages to both live up to the incredible build-up and be a satisfying resolution.

This is a perfect Friday night film, which will slowly grip you, as well as make you consider whether you might need a panic room yourself. Just make sure you hook up the phone if you get one...