One of David Fincher’s most underrated films is Panic Room which came out after he had made his name in complicated, dark films. This is perhaps his most commercial film, and for that it has the reputation of being less impressive. But in my opinion, this popcorn movie has much to praise and enjoy. I highly recommend checking out some of the special features for this film, but in the mean time I will go over my 5 favorite things about Panic Room.
5. It’s a one location/one night movie: I love movies that take place over one night. There’s something about the pacing that just picks up perfectly in this situation. You know that this shit is going to go down and by the morning it’s going to end one way or the other. There’s a closing scene in Central Park, but besides that it all takes place in the beautiful brownstone that Meg (Jodie Foster) is spending the first night in with her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart). Three burglars enter the house and just so happen to need to get into the panic room that Meg and Sarah have locked themselves into. This room even further compounds the single location, since the mother and daughter are inside of it for a majority of the film.
4. The overlapping scenes: Since this movie takes place inside of this huge brownstone, visually it’s quite impressive how varied and interesting the presentation of scenes can be. The crosscutting between Meg and Sarah in the panic room, the three burglars in rooms around the house, and the surveillance footage is completely seamless. It keeps things tense and fresh. It also allows for scenes like when Meg and Sarah trying to connect the phone in the panic room to their main line, as the burglars are running down the stairs which you see in the surveillance screens, jumping to the camera actually in the room as Burnham (Forrest Whitaker) is stomping in the control panel in the basement. So many scenes are set up like that, making the viewer as unsure of what exactly is going on in the house as Meg and Sarah are locked way and vice versa. Sometimes the viewer is privy to information that the characters aren’t. It works so well on both ends.
3. The characters: A huge strength of Panic Room is how great the mother-daughter pairing of Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart is. Not only do they look like a perfect match, but they have this easy back and forth that really makes you buy their relationship. Seeing this as Stewart’s first role you can see why so many people found her a promising young actor. Originally Nicole Kidman (fun fact: after leaving the part due to injury, she plays Meg’s ex-husband’s new girlfriend over the phone) and Hayden Panettiere (fun fact: Fincher refers to her as girly and annoying in the director’s commentary although he doesn’t say her name) were cast before they both ended up being replaced. That pairing could have worked I suppose, but I love Foster and Stewart’s rapport, Foster’s intelligent toughness, and Stewart’s snarky tomboy. I don’t think the relationship would have been framed the same way with other actresses.
On the other side of thing, the burglars are all great characters. Junior (Jared Leto) is a dumbass that provides plenty of comic relief as a spoiled relative of the former owner of the house that wants the jump on his family’s inheritance. Apparently, Leto came up with his character sporting cornrows. I love that because it just caps off how idiotic Junior is. Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) is sinister with his ski mask on throughout the first part of the film, a completely unwanted presence. Junior is an idiot and Burnham seems gentle, so as a pair they’re fairly harmless. You add Raoul into the mix who is merciless and an actual threat, and the dynamic has completely shifted. Burnham gives the burglars their first out when he doesn’t want to continue once he realizes there are people in the house, and Junior gives the second when he gets burned and decides this isn’t worth the effort, but Raoul is the one that forces the action forward. And the best character nuance in the film goes to Burnham, because it’s hard not to feel for the guy as his fate unravels. He’s not an evil guy, he just did some bad things. You actually feel bad for the guy who’s broken into the house of this family. That’s impressive.
Plus the realtor at the beginning of the film is played by Ian Buchanan who plays Dick Tremayne for Twin Peaks fans.
2. The scene where they break into the house: Maybe it just doesn’t seem that groundbreaking since it’s been done so often, but usually never as perfectly executed as in Panic Room. Fincher’s direction is impeccable and the visual effects are seamless. Never is this more apparent throughout the film than in the breaking in scene. It starts with a minutes long single take where the camera travels from the bedside around the house a bit, moving between levels to the ground floor revealing the men looking into the house. The camera doesn’t even appear to be a physical object capturing this. It’s more like a floating lense, moving between the walls, through the handle of a coffee pot, into a key hole (watch the VFX breakdown). You know it’s not possible, but the effects are so well done that it all feels real. It eventually cuts from the single take to show Meg’s perspective, the house alarm, and back to the burglars, but it’s a fantastic sequence that exemplifies how technically impressive this is.
1. It’s David Fincher’s version of a popcorn movie: After the complexities of Seven and Fight Club but before the grandeur of Zodiac and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button David Fincher made Panic Room. I guess if you compare this to those four films this seems like small potatoes, but to me that’s missing the point. Fincher wanted to make something a bit lighter, a “Friday night movie” as he says on the director’s commentary, and the idea of working in one location was appealing after the many locations of his prior films. Of course, the product he ended up with is far more complex than expected and the visualization just as grandiose as his other films. Because of Fincher’s particular vision this popcorn movie is greater than it could have been if made by a different director. The story is fairly common, I’ll give you, but the technical prowess and direction make this look anything but generic.
