Panic Room is a 15 year old Honda Civic with full spoiler kit, metallic pain, sunroof and garish spoilers. It is hotted up to all hell and is definitely eye-catching, but at the end of the day most will simply ask ‘why bother?’.
It’s ironic that the very room purpose built to protect Meg (Jodie Foster) and daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) is also the very same tiny cube that practically invites the bad guys to wait you out in privacy.
It is even more ironic when early in the film Meg implores her daughter “Now is not the time to panic!”, leading to me crossing my fingers ever so tightly in tha vain hope that Sarah would reply “Well what the fuck are we doing in here!?!”
Alas, never happened.
But back to how they managed to find themselves in the room in the first place.
It is night #1 in a new home for newly divorced Meg, which is also the reason that the alarm system and phone lines aren’t yet hooked up.
A trio of opportunistic burglars, Burnham (Forest Whitaker), Junior (Jared Leto) and creepy Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) brazenly wander into the home, thinking it still deserted.
Look it’s a scary g… sorry I can’t keep a straight face. Look at his hair!
Of course this is not the case, and shortly after the startling realisation that Jared Leto and THIS HAIRCUT are in their home, meg and Sarah sequester themselves in the tiny but well appointed and secure space meant for just such circumstances.
From here it plays out as it must. But David Fincher makes what should be a straightline B movie into a heavily stylised and better than it needs to be effort, squeezing every ounce from the flimsy premise. At times almost too much, as the limitations of the scenario demand either a brief running time or repetition.
As Fincher proved with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo he is not afraid of repetition… a 90 minute film might’ve bean leaner and packed more punch.
Sarah is annoying in the way only over-confident and self assured teens can be, Foster is her usual vulnerable yet strong combo, and the trio of home invaders are at turns hapless, disagreeable and determined depending on the demands of the scene.
Fincher goes to town with camera angles, panning and zooming through the spacious home. His visual flair and eye for a unique perspective and idea are plain for all to see, it’s just in such limited surroundings there is only so much one can do with flair, which brings us full circle back to why you would bother souping up a busted old car?
Because you can.
Final Rating – 7 / 10. Panic Room is an especially accomplished B movie, but it remains a B movie. Just a very good one.
