"Panic Room" commits a crime movies should absolutely always avoid: sparking an indifferent reaction. Good or bad, awful or brilliant, shocking or absolutely bland, movies should work to achieve some sort of reaction. "Panic" has a few short-lived thrills, but overall it just leaves the viewer flat.
There's a lot to recommend about the film, but the bland impression it leaves overwhelms the fleeting pleasures it provides.
Rich, bitter divorcee Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) moves into a massive house in the middle of New York City with her daughter, Sarah (Kristen Stewart). This house is equipped with a "panic room," an impenetrable, super-secure room that allows protection from the outside as well as surveillance on every room in the house.
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Little does Meg know that the last inhabitant of the house was an old eccentric who left some extremely valuable hidden treasure somewhere in the house. On her first night in the house, a team of well-rounded thieves arrives to claim this prize.
Before you know it, Meg and her daughter are in the panic room and the film becomes a test of wills (and viewer patience) between the burglars and the captives.
The performances are all fine. Foster gives her role the right degree of intensity, turmoil and desperation. Stewart gives a solid cold performance as the daughter. And the burglars are largely caricatures, though Jared Leto gets a few good zinger lines and Forest Whitaker allows the viewer to empathize with his character, since he is pushed into this crime by love for his daughter.
There are also some really great moments scattered throughout. Whenever the panic room door is open during the home invasion, the suspense is white-knuckle and the buildup to the closing of the door is seriously edgy. The payoff to these sequences leaves something to be desired, but that doesn't change the fact that they successfully put the viewer on the edge of the seat.
The problem lies at the very root of the film: the screenplay. The idea is slim enough to make for a dynamite short film or a good "Tales from the Crypt" episode, but it really stretches itself thin at two hours. There are long periods of time where the audience is left hanging or when events take their time leading up to the next plot point.
This buildup time is problematic mainly because "Panic" is seriously predictable. There is not a single thing Meg thinks of to help her escape that anyone paying attention will not think of first. The burglar's actions are likewise telegraphed and way too easy to guess long before they happen.
Also, "Panic" carries little suspense because roughly one minute after each character is introduced, it's perfectly obvious who will live and who will die.
This didn't always hold true for David Fincher films. In "Se7en," he let a main character played by Gwyneth Paltrow get beheaded! (As long as I'm spoiling great endings, Bruce Willis was actually dead and Rosebud was a sled.) Fincher plays much more by the rules here. It seems that after the cinematic and thematic anarchy of "Fight Club," the studio executives put a leash on him.
"Panic Room" is mostly formula, very little Fincher. The Fincher touch is present, but it's half-hearted. Every trademark, fancy, computer-enhanced camera shot feels forced. It's like he just had to throw a little visual pizzazz here and there to remind us that he's a visual mastermind.
Fincher's films used to speak for themselves. Now he's trying to make the point with minor inspired sequences and it just isn't working.
"Panic" is just too subdued. Every time it starts to build up steam, it cuts itself off. It succeeds in jolting the audience here and there, but it doesn't sustain any intensity.
The film's final image (which I won't give away here) sums up the film's approach and its weaknesses: it's a single gag, it's stretched out too long and there's a subtle camera trick in it that viewers may or may not catch.
"Panic" is one long gag with some cinematic trickery that some won't notice and will be simply transparent to anyone with a basic understanding of computer effects. This movie could've been a lot more effective, but it just doesn't try. Unless you're only looking for cheap thrills or are a David Fincher completist, don't bother with this "Home Alone" for adults.
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