Panic Room

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Panic Room (2002)

Panic Room:

David Fincher, who's most notable works were Se7en (1995) and Fight Club (1999), gives us his latest with Panic Room. We follow Meg Altman who has just gotten divorced and is in the market for a new house in Manhattan. Meg and her daughter Sarah find a house that seems perfect and it even has a panic room where the occupants can stay out of harm's way in cases of home intrusion. They move in without delay and on their first night there... you guessed it, their home is broken into by three intruders. They quickly make use out of their panic room, locking themselves in and the intruders out. To complicate matters even more, Sarah is a diabetic who is stuck in the panic room without her medication. Now they must figure out a way to get some help before it's too late.

Fincher's direction is exemplary, giving us camera angles and shots that take us through walls, in keyholes, and many other inordinate places. He made a good impression immediately with the opening credits which were very uniquely handled and they struck me immediately. However there were slight problems with the writing/execution of the script, specifically with the actors playing the intruders. They are supposedly these very dangerous men, but the villains acted more like bumbling idiots than any serious threat. They reminded me of the villains in the Home Alone series where they just kept falling over each other. They just were not very convincing in their supposedly threatening roles. The other thing that stuck in my craw was how they handled the ending which seemed a bit abrupt. I was kind of curious as to what happened to one of the intruders at the end, but they never explained it after making him out to be the "nice" bad guy. The movie did have a lot of potential but the situations just weren't convincing enough to really sell the suspense. David Fincher manages to do a good job with the materials he has to work with.

-Tso