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Thanks to amazon.com for DVD art.
David Fincher's Panic Room begins with an uber-cool opening credit sequence with the credits being superimposed onto buildings. They even have reflections and shadows. In this stylized thriller, the rest of the movie is also slick.
Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) is a recent divorcee who is looking for a new house with her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart). They find a giant house, complete with "panic room". What is a panic room, you ask? It is a room engulfed in steel where you can hide and there is not way you can be gotten to. Since this is a movie, theives have to come on the first night that Meg and Sarah are in. And, of course, what they are looking for is in the panic room.
Panic Room cannot be mistaken for an arthouse movie, or anything of the type. It is a perfect example of a Hollywood movie. Bumbling crooks, main female characters who look weak but inside are strong, teens who are the opposite. In fact, we don't even know that Sarah has diabetes until halfway through the movie. If screenwriter David Koepp had had some more time to make characters, then maybe I wouldn't have been so aback when she suddenly starts to have an attack.
Panic Room doesn't slack on tense situations. Anytime when Meg or anyone had to dart out of the room for a quick second (in slo-mo, of course), then you feel like your heart is about ready to jump out of your chest. Camera work by Conrad Hall and Darius Khondji was exceptional. When they panned throughout the house, it may be unnecessary, but it still looks wicked cool. It doesn't rely on split-screens or quick cuts or half-second scenes, it just is smooth and graceful.
Foster was pretty good as Meg, but she wasn't anything Oscar-worthy. I thought that Stewart was uneven as her daughter, her feelings were mixed and changed at the drop of a hat. The three criminals (Jared Leto, Dwight Yoakam, Forest Whitaker) were pretty good and their bickering looked like it wasn't staged. Many people have complained about the ending. I'm one of them. It seemed abrupt and unlikely, but it's a Hollywood movie. It doesn't have to be original. And the last scene at the bench was unnecessary, two minutes of added time. It was long enough already. I wished that they could have had the entire movie take place in the house and only a couple characters, that would have made it a more inviting premise.
All in all, Panic Room is a very tense movie that pales on characters but still makes you be creeped out of your mind.
Rated R for language and some violence.
Review Date: November 10, 2002