Review of Panic Room (2002) by Darcey P — 30 Nov 2009

?I spent the last 12 years of my life building rooms like this specifically to keep out people like us.?

Jodie Foster reminds us there is always room to panic...

Your in your house, you hear a noise, you wonder what is it, you realize is must be robbers, what do you do? What you could do is lock yourself in a room that cannot be opened from the outside, it?s literally impossible. Problem solved, right?

No. Not at all, because if you are Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) living in a massive New York house, which you have just moved into, with your teen daughter, then you will be finding yourself with the unpleasant feeling of having a lobotomy. As Meg forgets the most simple and fundamental thinking of a situation like, for example, Meg forgets anything anyone has ever said in any other film or on TV about survival. All Meg seems to remember is how to be as pathetic as possible every moment she is on the screen.

Even after director David Fincher?s trademark ultra slick stlye, by the second half of Panic Room you won?t be panicking, you will be board. Board of Jodie Foster and her kid, Sarah. Sarah is the latest addition to ?Charcters I would punch in the face from movies?. Sarah tries to be hard and tough but fails. Mostly due to she is just a little child who happens to look like a little boy.

While Jodie fumbles for any kind of acting ability inside the panic room, the three robbers Burnham (Forest Whitaker), Junior (Jared Leto) and Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) are giving a master class in acting from the other side of the wall. Whitaker is best actor in the entire film, he genuinely makes you care for his character and empathize with his situation. Jared begins to come unstuck when his simple plan goes simply wrong, this makes him produce some misplaced and offbeat humor. This is a waste of his character. Dwight Yoakam is the perfect foil as the other side of the coin from both of Whitaker and Leto. He is cool, evil and intimidating on almost ever way which matters.

The final act of Panic Room does deliver some levels of satisfaction, but they are not enough to endure Jodie Foster and the brat Kirsten Stewart. Even with it?s pay offs Panic Room still can?t compensate for it?s inadequacies. At the end film it is revealed to the audience that there is no real point or moral, and so confirms our suspicions we have just wasted a perfectly good 2 hours. The message Panic Room is clear: Life sucks, live with it. An almost amazing fall from Grace from the man who directed Aliens 3 and Fight Club.

When someone asked me what is the worst idea I could imagine for a film? The reply ?Jodie Foster running around a house, with a child who is so annoying and who you want die every time she moves or talks, while trying desperately not to be violent in what is obviously a violent situation and violence is blatantly is the only way out.? Would probably rank pity high on my list, and that?s a summary of Panic Room, in a nutshell.

Panic Room proves that even great directors like David Fincher can make bad decisions.