No Reason To 'Panic'

Panic Room, David Fincher’s new thriller starring Jodie Foster, has something for everyone, yet the individual viewer ends up with nothing. Fincher and screenwriter David Koepp have created a thriller that is much more concerned with packing in every single convention of the horror film than actually creating any original chills of its own.

Foster portrays Meg Altman, a newly divorced mother who decides to purchase a newly available brownstone on the Upper West Side. Formerly owned by an eccentric millionaire, the apartment boasts a “panic room,” which is essentially a locked room deisgned to keep out invaders. However, this particular panic room houses several million dollars hidden by the millionaire and is the target of the three theives who break into Meg’s apartment her very first night.

The movie’s plot is plagued by illogical twists that leave the audience frustrated and irritated. Meg Altman predictably suffers from claustrophobia, though the disorder only surfaces during the first few hours of her confinement in her new home’s panic room. After Fincher satisfies himself that her claustrophobia has been successfully established, he moves on to another fairly well established cinematic trend, the fatal, time-dependent illness of Foster’s young daughter (Kristin Stewart). From an evil stepmother to a greedy young heir, a disconnected security phone line to a criminal disguising himself with the clothing of a dead man, this movie pulls out all the traditional stops.

But rather than producing mounting degrees of tension, each new addition from the bin of recycled cinematic conventions actually results in an air of familiarity, encouraging the audience to sit back and relax in their chairs, not jump out of them. After all, how frightened can one be by a trio of criminals who break into an unexpectedly occupied house after miscalculating the number of days a property is held in escrow before being sold? Even later, when the criminals begin to posture and threaten and wield their guns, their continued bumbling behavior makes them less frightening than the price tag for the New York four-story brownstone they are burgling.

Furthermore, to add to film’s impracticality, Meg Altman is able to cause a plume of propane gas to ignite from the panic room with impunity, yet the same ignited gas burns the incompetent thief, Junior (Jared Leto), despite the thick wall of concrete and steel between him and Meg. The survival boxes in the panic room contain fire blankets and mouthwash, but no food to alleviate the diabetic daughter’s drop in blood sugar while trapped in the panic room. The plot jerks such movements in such a contrived manner that the audience is able to predict the film’s inevitable conclusion.

Although Jodie Foster’s Academy Award for her performance in Silence of the Lambs testifies to her competency as an actress in a thriller, she struggles with this belabored script, posturing, grimacing and trembling through each scene in an attempt to convince the audience of the horror of her situation. Yet, in order to recreate herself as a believably unlikely heroine, Foster applies an air of uncertainty to the character of Meg, attempting to portray a normal woman who is pushed to courageous limits by exceptional circumstances. Unfortunately, the resulting combination of hyperactive anxiety and vacillation results in a character who puts audience members on the edges of their seats not in terror, but in irritation. One is too busy being annoyed by Foster’s flustered machinations and belated attempts to thwart the intruders to empathize with her terror.

The supporting characters of the three thieves do not aid Foster in conveying any fear and suspense in the tale. Leto bumbles through his role as Junior, the stereotypical greedy young heir, while Dwight Yoakam tries to cement his cross over from country music to serious acting by squinting his eyes and brandishing a large gun as Raoul, the most diabolical and least developed of the three theives. Forest Whitaker provides one of the few bright spots in an otherwise anemic cast, searching for depth in the character of the conflicted Burnham, the only thief whom writer Koepp seems to have bothered to provide with a sense of real humanity. Stewart, a young actress who looks disturbingly identical to a young Foster, also does an excellent job in her cinematic debut as Foster’s diabetic daughter Sarah.

Perhaps the movie’s real tragedy is its overwhelming focus on the development of the suspense through the bleakness of Fincher’s traditionally dark settings and the excessive maneuverings of Koepp’s script; in the process, it becomes entirely two dimensional, aiming only to frighten the audience. The movie also avoids exploring the intriguing social question posed by the similarity between both Burnham’s and Meg’s familiar devotion. Whereas Meg’s struggles to protect her daughter are portrayed as valiant and admirable—a mother’s natural instincts—Burnham’s motives for breaking into the Altman’s brownstone, while objectively no less admirable, (his drive to reach the millions hidden in the panic room is motivated by his need to finance his fight for the custody and protection of his children) are vilified. Both are driven to extremes by fundamental parental intuitions, yet one is considered courageous and bold, and the other, vile and unlawful. It is a provoking topic that is given only cursory attention; the same superficial treatment is applied to the rest of the movie.

Packed with twists and turns, bells and whistles, guns and explosions, Panic Room is an undirected and disjointed mania of contrived triggers. Ultimately for all its trouble, Fincher produces a rather bland movie.

film

Panic Room

Directed By David Fincher

Starring Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker

Columbia Pictures