Panic Room

Panic Room is a 2002 American thriller film directed by David Fincher and written by David Koepp. The film stars Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, Dwight Yoakam, Kristen Stewart, and Patrick Bauchau. The story is about a mother and daughter taking refuge in a safe room during a break-in of their home by three burglars who are after millions of dollars stored in a safe.

Plot

Recently divorced Meg Altman (Foster) and her 11-year-old daughter Sarah (Stewart) have just purchased a four-story brownstone on the upper west side of New York City. The house's previous owner, a reclusive millionaire, installed an isolated room used to protect the house's occupants from intruders. The "panic room" is protected by concrete and steel on all sides, a thick steel door, and an extensive security system with multiple surveillance cameras and a separate phone line. On the night the two move into the home, it is broken into by Junior (Leto), the grandson of the previous owner; Burnham (Whitaker), an employee of the residence's security company; and Raoul (Yoakam), a ski mask-wearing gunman recruited by Junior. The three are after $3 million in bearer bonds, which are locked inside a floor safe in the panic room.

After discovering that the Altmans have already moved in, Junior convinces a reluctant Burnham, who assumed the house was unoccupied, to continue with their heist. As they begin the robbery, Meg wakes up and happens to see the intruders on the video monitors in the panic room. Before the three can reach them, Meg and Sarah run into the panic room and close the door behind them, only to find that the telephone is inoperative. Intending to force the two out of the room, Burnham introduces propane gas into the room's air vents; Raoul, in conflict with Burnham and Junior, dangerously increases the amount of gas. Unable to seal the vents, Meg ignites the gas while she and Sarah cover themselves with fireproof blankets, causing an explosion which vents into the room outside and causes a fire, injuring Junior.

The Altmans make several attempts to call for help, including signaling a neighbor with a flashlight through the opening of a ventilation pipe, but the neighbor ignores it. Meg then taps into the main telephone line and gets through to her ex-husband Stephen (Bauchau) before the burglars cut them off.

When all attempts to get into the room fail, Junior lets slip that there is much more money in the safe than he let on, and gives up on the robbery. About to leave the house, he is shot by Raoul, who forces Burnham, at gunpoint, to finish the robbery. Stephen arrives at the home and is taken hostage by Burnham and Raoul—who severely beats him. To make matters worse, Sarah who has diabetes, suffers a seizure. Her emergency Glucagon syringe is in a refrigerator outside the panic room. After using an unconscious Stephen to trick Meg into momentarily leaving the panic room, Burnham enters it, finding Sarah motionless on the floor. After retrieving the syringe for Sarah, Meg struggles briefly with Raoul, who is thrown into the panic room, his gun knocked out of his hand. As Meg throws the syringe into the panic room, Burnham frantically locks himself, Raoul, and Sarah inside, crushing Raoul's hand in the sliding steel door. Meg, now with the gun, begs the two intruders over the intercom to give Sarah the injection, which Burnham does.

Having earlier received a call from Stephen, two policemen arrive. With Raoul threatening to kill Sarah, Meg lies to the officers and they leave. Meanwhile, Burnham opens the safe and removes the $22 million in bearer bonds inside. As the robbers attempt to leave while using Sarah as a hostage, Meg hits Raoul with a sledgehammer and Burnham flees. After a badly injured Stephen shoots at Raoul and misses, Raoul disables him and prepares to kill Meg with the sledgehammer, but Burnham, upon hearing Sarah's screams, returns to kill Raoul and leaves again. The police, alerted by Meg's suspicious behavior earlier, arrive in force and capture Burnham, who lets the bearer bonds go; they fly away with the wind.

Later, Meg and Sarah, having recovered from their harrowing experience, begin searching the newspaper for a new home.

Cast

• Jodie Foster as Meg Altman
• Kristen Stewart as Sarah Altman
• Forest Whitaker as Burnham
• Jared Leto as Junior
• Dwight Yoakam as Raoul
• Patrick Bauchau as Stephen Altman
• Ann Magnuson as Lydia Lynch
• Ian Buchanan as Evan Kurlander
• Paul Schulze as Officer Rick Keeney
• Andrew Kevin Walker as Sleepy neighbor
• Nicole Kidman as Stephen's Girlfriend on the Phone (uncredited)

Fincher initially cast Nicole Kidman as Meg Altman, but Kidman sustained a knee injury during the filming of Moulin Rouge! and dropped out.^[1] Kidman was replaced by Jodie Foster, which Fincher said affected the film's tone.^[2] He said, "Nicole Kidman makes you make a different movie. It's like Hitchcock casting Grace Kelly. It's about glamour and physicality. With Jodie Foster it's more about what happens in her eyes. It's more political. Jodie is someone who has spent 35 years making choices that define her as a woman and define women in film."

Production

Panic Room was directed by David Fincher based on an original screenplay written by David Koepp. Columbia Pictures paid Koepp a "record" $4 million for the screenplay.^[1] David Fincher described the premise of a divorcee and her daughter protecting themselves against home invaders, "It's a movie about the destruction of the home and how far you're willing to go to hold on to what you have." He chose to film Panic Room after Fight Club because the latter film was filmed across 150 different locations. The director sought a break, filming Panic Room in a self-contained location.^[3]

Fincher sought to have Darius Khondji as cinematographer, having worked with Khondji on Seven (1995). Early in production, Khondji left and was replaced by Conrad W. Hall. Fincher admitted that he micro-managed Khondji and that the cinematographer was frustrated about not being part of the decision-making process.^[3]

Though the movie is set in New York City, it was primarily filmed in Los Angeles, California.^[4]

David Prior, the producer of Panic Room's DVD, noted that the film was the "most elaborate, complex DVD I have yet produced". According to Prior, David Fincher originally conceived Panic Room as a low-budget B-film, but during the process it evolved into "a gargantuan undertaking that tested the endurance and tenacity of everyone involved".^[5]

Director David Fincher agreed that the film's production was indeed an arduous project, remarking it as a "logistical nightmare". He said that the lighting issue during the filming process was a particular difficulty due to the complexity with the security cameras used in the mansion that send surveillance images to the television in the panic room.^[6]

In the DVD audio commentary, screenwriter David Koepp says the idea for the film originated from a New York Times article;^[7] in the article and his other research sources, the rooms were always referred to as a "safe room", which was the original title of his screenplay. Realizing it didn't sound engaging enough to be a thriller, he changed the title and all references in the screenplay to "panic room".

Howard Shore composed and conducted the score. It was a smaller project undertaken by Shore shortly after completion of The Lord of the Rings scores, and was remarked to be one of Shore's "darkest, most brooding thrillers".^[8]

Box office

Panic Room was commercially released in the United States and Canada on March 29, 2002. It was screened in 3,053 theaters and grossed $30 million on its opening weekend.^[9] It ranked first at the box office and had the biggest Easter holiday opening to date. It also had the third biggest opening to date for a non-supernatural thriller film, following Hannibal (2001) and Ransom (1996).^[10] According to CinemaScore, which polls audiences, Panic Room received a "B" grade.^[11] The film went on to gross $96.4 million at the U.S. and Canadian box office and $100 million in other territories' box offices.^[9]

Critical reception

Rotten Tomatoes reported that 77% of 180 sampled critics gave the film positive reviews and that it got a rating average of 6.8 out of 10.^[12] At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 65 based on 36 reviews.^[13] Rotten Tomatoes reported of the critics' consensus: "Elevated by Fincher's directorial talent and Foster's performance, Panic Room is a well-crafted, above-average thriller."^[12]

Film critic Roger Ebert described Panic Room as close to "the ideal of a thriller existing entirely in a world of physical and psychological plausibility." Ebert wrote, "There are moments when I want to shout advice at the screen, but just as often the characters are ahead of me." The critic called Fincher "a visual virtuoso," writing, "He's also a master of psychological gamesmanship, and most of the movie will bypass fancy camerawork for classical intercutting between the cats and the mice (who sometimes trade sides of the board)." Ebert also applauded Foster's performance as "spellbinding", writing, "She has the gutsy, brainy resilience of a stubborn scrapper, and when all other resources fail her she can still think fast—and obliquely, like a chessmaster hiding one line of attack inside another."^[14]

Accolades

References

External links

• Official website
• Panic Room at the Internet Movie Database
• Panic Room at AllRovi
• Panic Room at Box Office Mojo
• Panic Room at Rotten Tomatoes