Day 27 - Panic Room

Panic Room (2002) directed by David Fincher

If I had to make a list of my favorite directors right now, David Fincher would be somewhere at the top next to Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson and Darren Aronofsky. The guy basically never misses and it's a movie like Panic Room where he shows what a great director he is. I'll just put it out there right now, Panic Room is not a great film. There's only so much you can do with the premise and the screenplay, but that is precisely the point. Fincher manages to turn a run of the mill Hollywood popcorn flick into a well crafted and satisfying nail-biter with an incredible amount of suspense. An action movie with such a simple premise shouldn't be this good, yet it is.

A woman and her daughter move in to a new house and as luck would have it, that very night three intruders break in trying to find something hidden in the house's panic room. Sensing the intruders, the mother and daughter lock themselves in the room trying to figure out the next step as the intruders do their best to break in. During this home invasion, you can get the sense this isn't your typical popcorn flick as Fincher weaves his camera in and out, up and down, side to side in long continuous shots building up the suspense. One particularly effective technique that is used frequently is rather than cutting from the mother and daughter to the bad guys in the next room, the camera will instead pass right through the wall giving the viewer the sense just how close they really are to each other. You almost want them to get away from the wall in fear that the bad guys might just reach right through it to grab them.

There is, however, only so much you can do with the script. Despite the elements of suspense, there are no real surprises here as these kind of movies have to stick to the script as they say. That doesn't make it any less thrilling though. Jodie Foster carries the movie with her strong performance as the desperate mother trying to protect her daughter, played by Kristen Stewart in one of her earliest roles. The problem with the bad guys is that they seem pretty niched. Forrest Whitaker is a bad guy with a conscience who just wants to get the job done without hurting anybody. Jared Leto seems to be calling the shots but loses his composure quickly as things don't go according to plan, while Dwight Yoakam is a total wild card who has no qualms with using violence.

In the grand scheme of things, Panic Room ends up being an exciting little thriller that'll be lumped in the same category as the rest of them, but it deserves a little more respect than that. It manages to thrill and excite with a sense of style and artistry. While far from Fincher's best work, it still manages to outshine the typical Hollywood fare.

Grade: B