Panic Room (2002)
Cast: Jodie Foster, Jared Leto,
Director: David Fincher
Synopsis: Foster and kid trapped in their own“Panic Room” when Psycho's drop in
Reviewed by: Zeeshan Mahmud

The name David Fincher is the only reason not the like this film. Maybe also David Koepp (screenwriter). Fincher because three of his four films before Panic Room are serious contenders for any best films list of the nineties. One of them is arguably the best film of the nineties. (Chronologically: Se7en, The Game, Fight Club). Koepp because he has no idea how to write good stories (as witnessed in the resolution of Stir of Echoes). The level of expectation and the sort of expectancy that stuck to Fincher post-Fight Club was unlike anything else in Hollywood had seen in a long time. Fincher was supposed to give us a film that we’d be talking about for the two years we’d have to wait for his next feature. And instead we were given a despicable version of Home Alone with Jodie Foster.

Single mother and daughter are spending their first night alone in their new home in Manhattan. A little after one a.m. three men break into their house. Neither party (burglars/burgled) is expecting company. The mother and daughter escape into a panic room which is specifically designed for such purposes and is impossible to break into. The film would end there, burglars cussing their way out and mother/daughter calling the police. Only that mum hasn’t hooked up the phone inside the panic room yet and what the burglars want…is inside that room.

Few Fincher fans were pleased with Panic Room though it made more money than any of his previous cinematic accomplishments. And the script is the chief tumour in this film. Filmed as an R-rated picture for incomprehensible reasons, Panic Room has profanity and violence it could well do without since there is no maturity or anything closely resemble adulthood in this picture. Nicole Kidman, the original star of the film was a fine choice for PR but a crippled (by the script of course) Jodie Foster who replaced her can do little to impress anyone.

But Panic Room if viewed without any knowledge of the cast and crew isn’t a bad film. It’s a reasonable and well meaning thriller reminiscent of Stephen King’s riveting book “Cujo.” Its Cujo meets Home Alone without the uncompromising payoff. If you’ve never watched Fight Club, Se7en or the Game, Panic Room is a good film to kill time on, on a Friday night. And there’s an excellent sequence when Jodie Foster leave the panic room to retrieve her mobile phone. But Fincher should’ve went the other way when he was interested in a James Ellroy adaptation.