Panic Room (2002)
Jodie Foster, Kristen Stewart, Forest Whitaker; d. David Fincher; B

I'm confused: Is the house supposed to be the safest place you could be or the most dangerous place you could be? It seems the most popular setting to put a suspense thriller in is right square in a house. Alfred Hitchcock did it twice with Rope and Rear Window, and heaven knows how many haunted house thrillers there's been. How can I feel safe in my own home when Hollywood keeps telling me to be afraid of all things that go bump in the night?

And, ugh, don't get me started on Panic Room. Not only isn't the house safe, but the freekin' panic room's not safe! What's a panic room, you ask? It's the seductive cellar that convinces recent divorcee Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) to buy a lavish and vast brownstone in Manhattan's upper west side. Located in the master bedroom, the panic room is an all-steel encased area complete with first aid supplies, food and water, a safe, and security monitors hooked up to cameras located all around the house. A paranoid neurotic's fantasy.

Perfect for hiding from things that go bump in the night, right? Sure... Except when those things that do the bumping want something located in the panic room! And poor Meg and her daughter, Sarah (Kristen Stewart), are caught up in that situation the very first night after they've moved in, as three stooges... err... "criminals" (Forest Whitaker, Jered Leto, and Dwight Yoakam) break in looking for some $3 million hidden in the panic room.

Panic Room's not particularly an original or substantial thriller script-wise. You can tell where the characters and the plot are going well without the help of tarot cards. In fact, the plot almost seems like a modern day version of Wait Until Dark, a superb 1967 thriller staring Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman being conned by three men in search of a cocaine-laced doll in her apartment. In fact, when Jodie Foster starts running around with a hammer near the end of the film, it pretty much is Wait Until Dark. But that's no matter. David Fincher (Se7en, The Fight Club) easily saves this rather weak script with his camera.

It's almost Hitchcockian how visually slick this thriller is. Fincher shows a keen understanding of visual storytelling, his eye-dazzling visuals easily manipulate the audience to the film's every thrill and chill and locks them into its claustrophobic mood (the tone would have been much more effective, though, had the film's aspect ratio been smaller). And the use of sound is also fundamental: The loud clank of steel of the panic room's door, the low hum of the television monitors, or just simply the absence of sound all together creates such a tense mood when placed with the movie's visuals.

Then there's Howard Shore's score. Though his score for Panic Room is good, it's certainly not one of the most effective it could be. Being a huge Bernard Herrmann fan I was expecting a dark, brooding score that would've taken me further into the thrills of Panic Room after all the comparisons the score had to his works. However, the only similarities this score has to anything Herrmann has written was the fact that some if it just happened to sound a little bit like Psycho.

Panic Room isn't a testament to great filmmaking, but it's one of the better films of its genre. This will probably be one of the few mainstream thrillers that comes out head and shoulders above the muck that's bound to come out this year.

© Vert A Go Go Reviews 2002