Panic Room

Review by Clint Morris

I wouldn't be surprised if director David Fincher did a correspondence course in Modern Psychology, it's evident in the way he can mess with people's emotions and know exactly what's going to sting their senses.

You'll recall Seven (1995) where Fincher had credulous viewers gasping for breath after the film's final moments; and less effectively, but still credibly, he tore your belief chord from your casing and set it on skepticism mode with The Game.

Now, with Panic Room he again wants to stir up those inner qualms, raise the goose bumps on your arm and see you fret until film's end. But in an atypical move, he's also recruited the funny bone and tear duct to aid in telling the story.

Panic Room marks the homecoming of screen icon, Jodie Foster, but it's far from the epic-scale film one expects her to do. Instead, it's her popcorn thriller, the kind of film where you can leave your brain at the door and just enjoy spilling your soda on the person next to you.

And while Fincher's dab hand at penning imaginative motives for his players is regrettably not existent here, the film on its own is still exceedingly enjoyable and still exceptionally forceful.

Meg Altman (Foster) and her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) are moving into an ostentatious new West Manhattan loft. From the realtor (Ian Buchanan) they discover that the previous owner was a rich man, and consequently very protective of his savings.

As a way of protecting his Benjamin collection, he created the Panic Room, a highly urbane safekeeping sphere that can protect the owner from burglars, whilst giving them reassurance of protection for themselves and their chattels.

Meg presumes she'll never need the Panic Room - and so our story begins.

Later that night, when both are asleep, three men break into the house, and fortuitously Meg catches it on one of the house's high-tech security cameras.

She hurriedly grabs her daughter and locks herself away in the Panic Room. Problem is, what the burglars want is actually in that room, and they're going to stop at nothing to get into it. Panic Room is a delectably fun thriller with a logically compelling, but somewhat irresolute script from David Koepp.

It's a bit of a departure for Foster, it's probably the most frivolous thing she has done in the past 5 or 6 years - but everyone deserves a break from playing FBI agents, dimish forest folk and sorrowful parents. She's good and still proves she can dunk herself into any character she's tapered to play for a couple of hours.

In some ways, Panic Room is probably a return to Silence of the Lambs style territory for the Oscar winner - sans the integrity and intelligence of the latter, but it has the same nail-biting feel and same rushed aggression.

As the three burglars, Jared Leto, Forest Whitaker and Dwight Yoakam provide tolerable believability; but on occasion you question if the inept threesome might have rocked up to work thinking they were doing a Home Alone sequel.

Same goes for a lot of the movie itself - besides having a child actor that resembles Macauley Culkin for starters - it meddles a little uneasily between genuine suspense and goofy black humor - but at the same time, it could be that element that makes Panic Room a human roller coaster.

Although David Fincher seems to be one of those guys who'll never be able to top his debut smash - Panic Room, on it's own 'Fosters' exciting, unpredictable and crowd-pleasing thrills, without having to dazzle the members of the Academy.

3.5 out of 5

Panic Room
Australian release: On show now.
Cast: Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, Dwight Yoakam, Kristen Stewart, Patrick Bachau, Ian Buchanan, Ann Magnuson, Paul Schulze.
Director: David Fincher.
Website: Click here

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