Survive the night. So this is about a recent divorcee (Jodie Foster) and her daughter (Kristen Stewart). They find the perfect spacious home in the Upper West Side, and with the New York City real estate market being what it is, they don’t hesitate and immediately buy it. It’s their first night in their new home, and they’ve been targeted by a trio of burglars (Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam, Jared Leto). The house came with a built-in panic room, and this is where these two will take their refuge. I’ve seen this once before and remember feeling that it was just okay. It didn’t leave a large impression on me, but because the details weren’t fresh in my head, I was excited to revisit it and see if I still felt the same way. I still don’t think Panic Room is perfect, but I did like it a bit better the second time around.
I think I just got more into the tension this time around. It’s what David Fincher excels at, and there is nobody else out there who crafts thrillers quite like he does. Panic Room is his shortest feature film at about 100 minutes long, and it’s pretty tight for the most part. It’s a game of chess between these two residents and these three criminals; the burglars want to get into the panic room by any means necessary, and the mother and daughter need to figure out how they can reach the outside world for assistance. I love how organically the ideas and strategies come about as the story unfolds. They may not be the best ideas (i.e. the fire scene), but you can still always understand how these characters arrived at their decisions. They don’t come right out and tell you what these main five characters are all about, they show you instead, and that’s almost always the better choice in a film. I liked the choice to have the daughter stay more composed than the mother, and it gives the dynamic between them some flavor. I also like how you have differing degrees of how bad these burglars are. Forest Whitaker stays mostly sympathetic because he has the most conscience and isn’t trying to hurt anyone, while Jared Leto is a hothead, quick to fly off the handle.
As far as critiques go, the CGI is dated. I try not to hold that against older movies since technology tends to age rapidly, but it doesn’t look great and is featured prominently for a couple of shots. David Fincher likes to put deliberately impossible shots into his movies sometimes because that is how he envisioned them in his head, so I get why it’s there. My biggest issue with this movie is that I never feel like I got a good grasp on the layout of this building. It’s four stories high, and it becomes easy to forget who or what is on which floor. This did undercut the tension of a few moments, occasionally taking me out of it. Still, at the end of the day, Panic Room is worth a watch.
Panic Room (2002) ***1/2
– Critic for Hire
Critic for Hire 