Panic Room

December 10, 2004

Rated: R Runtime: 101 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Panic Room is the new thriller from director David Fincher. Based on Fincher’s previous efforts such as Seven and Fight Club, we were anxious to see what he could do with such a cool premise and a top notch cast including Jodie Foster and Forest Whitacker.

Panic Room

That cool premise we mentioned is exactly what the title implies, a “panic room”. Foster plays Meg Altman. She has recently divorced her husband and buys a new “brownstone” house in Manhattan for herself and her young daughter. The house is huge with 4 floors and lots of rooms. One of those rooms is very unique, it is called a “panic room”. This is the ultimate in personal security. Once inside the panic room has it’s own air, water, security monitors, etc, and it is all enclosed in several feet of concrete and steel.

As you might guess, since the movie is named after it, Meg and her daughter end up locked in this room with bad guys outside wanting in really bad. What follows is a real cat and mouse game. The bad guys refuse to leave without what they came to get, and what they came to get is in that room which she is terrified to come out of for fear of them hurting her or her daughter.

Fincher provides his usual good visuals and dark feel which he likes to apply to his thrillers. And he also makes this movie a bit smarter than the average booger movie. It’s not that the characters do not do the stereotypical dumb things that we expect in these type of movies. I mean, for instance, if that were MY panic room, this movie is done in about 5 minutes as I would have some major firepower stashed in there with me and the intruders would get to “say hello to my leetle friend!”. However, the movie gives us a wink and a nudge at a couple of points, including one time where one of the characters says something to the effect of “why didn’t WE think of that?”.

Overall, this is a very good movie, but it is not a GREAT movie. We can’t quite put it on the same level as Fincher’s masterpieces, Seven and Fight Club. We give it a very strong 3 stars. If you’re in the mood for a thriller, by all means go see it.

Posted by Billy Bob | Filed Under 3 Stars, Dwight Yoakam, Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, Jodie Foster, Kristen Stewart, R, Theatrical, Thriller