‘You don’t look so good, ma’am…’
David Fincher was red hot on the eve of the release of Panic Room in 2002. The huge success of Se7en and Fight Club in the ’90s ensured that expectations were high for Fincher’s follow-up to the latter movie, and Panic Room saw Fincher team up with celebrated scriptwriter David Koepp – another man in demand having written the screenplay for both Jurassic Park and Mission: Impossible. It is only in this context that Panic Room felt a little underwhelming on release. Divorced from all that baggage, this is a tense and successful thriller that isn’t quite up there with Fincher’s best work but remains a solid film nevertheless…
In the midst of a messy divorce and spending her first night in a new state-of-the-art apartment block, Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) find themselves under attack from a trio of thieves. Junior (Jared Leto) is the de facto leader of the group, despite his hot-headedness, Burnham (Forest Whitaker) is the safecracker and ski mark-wearing hair trigger Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) is the wildcard. After successfully breaking into the apartment block, a standoff ensues when Meg and Sarah blockade themselves inside the titular panic room.
Taking place almost entirely in one location, Panic Room affords Fincher the opportunity to demonstrate how proficient he is with the camera. The kinetic energy of the plot is matched by the wandering camera and the intensity of the performances. Leto is a little too over-the-top perhaps but the rest of the cast are in fine form with Foster and Stewart convincing as a mother and daughter duo and Whitaker quietly excellent as the more considered of the three thieves. As previously alluded to, Panic Room suffers in comparison to Fincher’s earlier work, but taken on its own merits, Fincher’s twisted entry in the home invasion canon must go down as a success. It also made me yearn for Fincher to take a swing at an out-and-out horror movie – this film is as close as he has come thus far.
As home invasion movies go, there are much more intense and frightening options out there (hello, The Strangers) but few are as stylish as this one. Well worth seeking out.