Panic Room
Tags: suspenseful, neo noir, murder, mystery, violence, action, revenge, sadist

Plot synopsis:
Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) is searching for a new home with her 11 year-old daughter, Sarah (Kristen Stewart), on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. They tour a luxurious, four-story brownstone and are shown, among other things, the master bedroom which houses an interesting commodity: a panic room. Lydia Lynch (Ann Magnuson), the realtor, explains that the previous owner was a reclusive millionaire who built the hidden panic room as a safeguard against intruders. It's protected with four-inch walls and an impressive security system built in complete with a separate phone line and security cameras situated throughout the townhouse. However, despite Sarah's intrigue, Meg is apprehensive about the room. Still, pressured by the tight market and assured that the home will quickly close, Meg decides to move in right away. After some light unpacking and a pizza dinner, they settle in for the night. Meg checks her daughter's watch, designed to track her blood sugar and keep her type 1 diabetes in check, before retreating to her room to bathe and down a bottle of red wine, clearly distraught over the move and her recent divorce. She attempts to wire the phone system in the panic room but gives up and goes to bed as rain falls outside.Later that night, three men break into the house. Junior (Jared Leto), the grandson of the previous owner and Burnham (Forest Whitaker), an employee of the security system with which the panic room was fitted, intend to steal the $3 million in bearer bonds stored in a floor safe inside the panic room. Burnham is distressed to see, however, that Junior has recruited a buddy of his named Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) to assist in the heist. Burnham argues over Raoul's presence, saying that he knows nothing about him and the plan was for just two of them to quietly go in, get the money, and get out. His reservations are doubled, however, when the trio notice that the townhouse is occupied. Angry at Junior for failing to follow up on when the Altmans were supposed to have moved in and unwilling to continue the heist with people inside, Burnham threatens to leave. Junior persuades him that nothing bad will happen and convinces Burnham to stay and finish the job, reminding him that he needs the money more than any of them.
Meanwhile, Meg wakes up to use the restroom. When she returns to her room, she finds that she left the lights on in the panic room. As she goes to turn them off, she notices the activated security cameras and sees the three men downstairs beginning to make their way up the staircase. She runs to Sarah's room and pours water over her face to wake her before she leads her down the hall. They make it to the elevator just as Raoul catches up to them. As they descend, Junior shouts down to Burnham on the ground floor to intersect them but Burnham refuses to hurt anyone. Sarah reminds her mother of the panic room and Meg hits the emergency stop on the elevator, redirecting it to the top floor. They exit the elevator and run into the panic room and shut the door just as Junior enters the master bedroom. In anger, he kicks the mirror hiding the panic room door, breaking it. Raoul calmly tells him that's seven years' bad luck. When Burnham finds out that the Altmans are in the panic room, he sadly tells the others that there is no way to get inside now. As Junior panics, Burnham assures him that there's nothing the women can do. Cell phones won't work in the panic room and he knows the emergency phone line hasn't been hooked up.Inside the panic room, Meg and Sarah discover that they have no way to contact the outside world for help. Feeling claustrophobic, Meg tries to calm herself and checks Sarah's watch before realizing that her glucagon syringes are outside and out of reach. The intercom system works and Meg threatens the men to leave or she will call the cops. However, Burnham makes it clear that he knows they don't have a phone and that they will not leave. Time passes and Meg continues to monitor the men through the surveillance system. Sarah peers through one of the bins inside the room, tossing aside blankets and things until she finds a flashlight. She lies on her stomach facing a vent allowing fresh air to circulate into the room from outside and puts the flashlight into it, turning it on and off in Morse Code for SOS. The light makes it across the alley into an adjacent apartment where a man (Andrew Kevin Walker) is sleeping. He soon stirs and gets up to see the light but, even when Meg and Sarah try to scream for help, he dismisses them and shuts his blinds.Meanwhile, Raoul and Junior attempt to tunnel into the panic room from the floor below with a sledgehammer but Burnham reminds them that they'll never get through the 4 inches of steel surrounding the room. Knowing that the women won't come out of the panic room themselves, Burnham devises a way to force them out. He retrieves a propane tank from the patio outside and attaches a garden hose to the nozzle. Picking up on the plan, Raoul uses a sledgehammer to break through the drywall in the master bedroom. Burnham breaks into the main ventilation pipe and feeds the hose into it, allowing just enough gas to filter into the room that Meg can smell it. His intent is just to send the women a message but Raoul becomes impatient and feeds more gasoline. Meg begins to cough but Raoul refuses to let up. Meg attempts to block off the vents with duct tape but the gas still seeps through. Desperate, she finds a lighter in the room and covers Sarah and herself with fireproof blankets before extending the lighter into the ventilation shaft. Hearing the ominous clanking of the lighter against the vent, Junior presses his ear to the wall as Burnham and Raoul back up. Meg ignites the gas and the explosion knocks her to the ground as the fire follows the path of the gas back into the room, severely burning Junior and propelling the propane tank into the far wall.Angered and in pain, Junior looks for medicine and argues with Raoul on his way downstairs. Burnham is kept out of their conversation and Raoul demands more money for his share in light of what's happened. As they argue and as Meg watches them from the surveillance cameras, she realizes that she can probably retrieve her cell phone from the bedroom and make it back before they notice. With Sarah watching, Meg opens the door and runs out to the bedroom, grabbing her phone but knocking over the lamp on the night stand. Burnham sees the light flicker from his point on the stairs and the men race back up to the room in time to see Meg dive back into the panic room. Junior panics when he sees that Meg has a cell phone but Burnham reminds him that cell phones won't work in there. Meg finds this out the hard way until she discovers that she can hardwire the house line to the emergency phone line in the room. She manages to reach into the circuitry and tap the main line as Burnham, having seen the wire disappear from the outlet in the bedroom, races downstairs to cut the line. After being placed on hold by the police, Meg follows her daughter's suggestion of calling her ex-husband, Stephen. Stephen's girlfriend (Nicole Kidman) picks up inciting a hostile reaction from Meg. She is finally able to speak to Stephen for just a moment before Burnham cuts the line. Meg remains resolute that Stephen will help them but Sarah is not convinced. She then confesses to her mother that she's been feeling dizzy and hungry.As Meg pilfers through the bin for something with sugar, Junior goes downstairs. He lets slip to Raoul and Burnham that there is actually more money in the safe than he initially told them but that it's not even worth it now and he wants to leave. Raoul pulls out a gun and threatens Junior, to Burnham's indignation. Junior refuses to follow through with the heist, so Raoul shoots him in the head. Meg witnesses this from the surveillance cameras and hides the view from Sarah. Raoul then threatens Burnham to complete the job just as someone walks into the house. Meg watches, horrified, as Stephen (Patrick Bauchau) is brought into the main room at gunpoint and fails to hide this fact from Sarah. In view of the cameras, Raoul begins to beat up Stephen and Burnham tries to tell Meg that it will stop if she leaves the room. Helpless, Meg cradles Sarah and screams in frustration until Sarah's watch beeps in alarm. Her blood sugar dangerously low, Sarah suffers a seizure. Her seizing eventually subsides and Sarah is left in a semi-conscious state. Raoul and Burnham then use Stephen's unconscious form to trick Meg out of the room. Already desperate for Sarah's medicine, Meg resolves to leave. She finds Sarah's medicine pouch as Raoul and Burnham enter the panic room. Meg returns and struggles with Raoul who is thrown into the panic room. Burnham shuts the door as Meg throws Sarah's medicine pouch inside. Raoul's hand is crushed in the sliding door and he loses his gun. Meg is able to retrieve it and she activates the two-way intercom system to beg the men to let her give her daughter an injection. Burnham refuses to open the door, afraid that Meg will shoot them, so Meg demands that he give Sarah the injection himself. He agrees, but only if she'll leave the room. Raoul shouts out that if Meg calls the police or if she tries to leave the house, he will kill Sarah. Meg leaves and runs downstairs where she finds Stephen. He is alive but badly injured, so Meg props him up in a chair.Raoul manages to extract his hand from the door and sits in agony as Burnham opens the medicine pouch and follows Sarah's instructions to give her the injection. Burnham explains that it wasn't his intent to harm anyone and that he only wants a brighter future for his son. He tells Sarah that she and her mother weren't supposed to be here tonight. Once he is complete, he tells Meg over the intercom that Sarah will be all right. Then, he opens his duffel bag and removes a contraption that he uses to access the safe in the floor of the panic room. He gets the safe open and removes over $22 million in bearer bonds.
Suddenly, the doorbell rings. Raoul and Burnham see that the police have arrived. Stephen admits that he called the police before coming over. Knowing that the intruders are watching, Meg calms down and answers the door, acting as though she just woke up. The Officer Keeney (Paul Schulze) tells Meg that he and Officer Morales (Mel Rodriguez) are responding to an earlier call and a neighbor's complaint about shouts coming from her home. Meg lies to the officers and convinces them to leave, although Keeney suspects something. He goes so far as to suggest that Meg can't speak right now and assures her that they will remain in the area, but Meg laughs him off and shuts the door.With the police gone and Meg briefly out of sight, Raoul and Burnham leave the panic room with Sarah in tow. They walk downstairs where they come face to face with Stephen in his chair and a gun in his hands pointed at them. He demands that Sarah be released but Raoul refuses. Stephen shoots and misses as Meg comes down on Raoul from upstairs with a sledgehammer. She knocks Raoul over the bannister where he falls and breaks his leg as Burnham runs out to the patio with the bearer bonds under his arm. Hardly disabled despite his broken leg, Raoul attacks Meg and overpowers her. Sarah jumps on his back and stabs him in the neck with her syringe but Raoul knocks her off violently. Sarah crawls into the fireplace, screaming as Raoul grabs his sledgehammer and threatens to crush Meg with it. However, a shot rings out and Raoul falls over dead. Meg looks to see Burnham standing over her with Raoul's gun. He tells Meg that they'll be alright now before leaving. However, as soon as he walks outside into the alley, he is surrounded by SWAT team members and forced at gunpoint to raise his arms. He does so and the loose bearer bonds fly out of his grasp with the wind and out of sight.Stephen recovers and Meg and Sarah are soon left searching for another home together as they heal from their ordeal. Sitting on a park bench together, Sarah suggests a nice, simple apartment and Meg smiles in agreement.

Review: 3) Forest Whitaker, again (he's so good so often it's hard to not expect a great performance).The rest of the film is very good, directed with style and intelligence as usual by David Fincher (who did Seven and Fight Club).
David Fincher directs this cleverly conceived thriller about a mother and daughter trapped inside a panic room by three criminals.
In her first suspense-thriller since her Academy-Award winning turn in "The Silence of the Lambs", Jodie Foster registers quite well as middle-aged New Yorker Meg Altman, who moves into an EXTREMELY spacious brownstone with her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart), a diabetic tomboy.
Meg and Sarah waste no time in putting the claustrophobic area to use (on their first night, no less) when a trio of burglars (Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto and Dwight Yoakam) make their way into her building to retrieve a large sum of money.
While 'Panic Room' is not exactly white-knuckle suspense, it definitely has its moments, especially the heart-pounding moment when Meg leaves the panic room to grab her cell phone, and the the tension-building scene when Whitaker and Yoakam enter the panic room when Foster leaves.
Besides that, 'Panic Room' is an intelligently written and directed thriller from director David Fincher (Fight Club).
On their first night in the house, they get invaded by three criminals (Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam, Jared Leto) intend on getting something from the previous owner left in the panic room.
This was a very suspenseful and exciting thriller from David Fincher who is responsible for my all time favourite film which is Seven.
It is portrayed very realistically, it could have happened the way it did and what is more scarier than being attacked in your own home?Excellent performance by Jodie Foster, Forrest Whitaker, Jared Leto and the very young Kristen Stewart.
If you like Jodie Foster and/or David Fincher, it is definitely the film for you as they are delivering here the climax of they talent..
This film follows recently divorced mother Meg Altman (played by Jodie Foster) and her diabetic preteen daughter Sarah (played by Kristen Stewart) who move in the luxury condos of Manhattan.
Meg and her daughter quickly take shelter in the panic room, only to learn that what the burglars are searching for happens to be in that room.David Fincher is an expert conveying suspense in his movies, and this is the biggest aspect he achieves in this film.
Video surveillance plays a key role in the plot with the two main characters watching over the three criminals via video cam in the panic room, so some of the most suspenseful scenes take place through video surveillance; and the video surveillance works very well as a plot device.
Jodie Foster's character and her daughter played by the then 11-year old Kristen Stewart are characters the audiences quickly come to care about, and the criminals serve as the most interesting characters, with a big moral conflict between these three playing a key role in the plot.
Forest Whitaker is very charismatic as the criminal who holds moral values and comes off as a somewhat likable, despite this affiliation with the other two who act in pure evil.Panic Room is a very compelling movie and a decent piece of work by David Fincher.
Panic Room gives a hiding place a new meaning, where a divorced woman (Jodie Foster) and her daughter (Kristen Stewart) take refuge in a safe room inside their house to hide from three thieves, who are searching for a missing fortune.You've all experience the thrills and excitement when you're in your hiding spot while playing a game of hide-and-seek.
This movie takes that definition of a hiding place to an entire new level, as it is fingernail-biting to see the protagonists shield themselves in a safe room from the antagonists, attempting to protect themselves from harm and, at the same time, trying to figure out what the bad guys want.Filmed with non-stop thrills, action and adventure, this crime thriller will surely give you an edge-of-your-seat entertainment, save from some lame acting moments.Grade B.
Jodie Foster is great, as usual, and Kristen Stewart was very good as the Sarah (although from the trailers, it was hard to tell if it was a boy or girl...)and Dwight and Forrest were great as well.
PANIC ROOM is a suspense thriller quite different from what I was expecting since I thought it would be something in the Horror genre, but no, it isn't, the plot is about a robbery that three guys try to do to a house with a panic room (I think it was the this title which induced me in error, because panic room is a protection room to the owners of the house).
About the cinematography I enjoyed the camera work which is excellent (especially in the first hour when they shot incredible details and the camera does a "travelling effect") and the light (almost the entire film is shot with little illumination, which makes it a suspenseful dark thriller, which I use to appreciate!:).
All the actors do their parts justice; Jodie Foster is convincing, the daughter pulls off apathy and so forth, Whitaker comes across as a reluctant man forced by circumstance, and there's a great (albeit small) performance by Cop #1.However, good acting and good direction do not make this film.
To what degree Koepp deserves the blame for these mismatched, unpleasant elements I do not know, but in my opinion he hasn't written a great script since Jurassic Park, which had all the comedy of Panic Room, but must have stolen the suspense from the second half.Overall, I'd give this movie 2 out of 5.
Although "Panic Room" is probably meant to be a thriller or suspense film or something like that, I couldn't help but think it was a comedy.
"Phone Booth" had the right idea with the "one-scene-only" style story, but "Panic Room" doesn't.After viewing it, you wish that Macualy Culkin was around, and he was setting your scalp on fire, knocking you down stairs with paint cans, or hurling bricks at your head from the top of a 3-storey building.
It would have made a lot more sense, and made the movie a lot shorter- which would have been a good thing.Damn you "Panic Room".
However it sometimes brings out the best of the director, and Panic Room is a massive example of this, showing David Fincher's class through and through.
However without Fincher's obsessively bleak vision to give it an edge Panic Room would have been another slick forgetable thriller, instead it is classic film-making that truly deserves the title of 21st century Hitchcock..
The movie focuses on its characters, it isn't just a lot of pointless action, I love a good thrilling action film like this that actually has meaningful characters.
While Meg and Sarah fortify their position, the gang try to work out how to either get into the room or get them to come out of the room.Sometimes the simplest ideas can be very effective and produce great thrills because the script knows the boundaries and generates thrills by reminding us all the time that we are stuck within those boundaries (Die Hard and Speed come to mind as examples) and so I hoped that Panic Room would manage to do the same and work with a good sense of claustrophobia and tension.
This film delivers.Foster plays Meg Altman, who is buying a new home for her and her daughter after the break up of her marriage.The new house has a 'panic room', a room that is secure and can not be broken into.
The house is broken into, and what the bad guys want is in the panic room.And so starts the fun!
They aren't two dimensional characters, which most bad guys in the movies are these days.Any one who likes thrillers, which are few and far between these days, should see this film.
We are face to face mostly low-minded Hollywood thriller from the video clip director of Madonna, David Fincher and screenplay writer of the big budget movies David Koepp, like Jurassic Park, Carlito's Way, Mission Impossible.
Sure, there's a lot of action - such as it is - outside the room - but even what isn't contained within the ultrathick walls of the safe place is contained within the relatively small house itself (or maybe just the ultrathick walls of the screenwriter's mind).The gist of the story is that Meg Altman (Jodie Foster), who's recently been divorced from her husband, a very wealthy pharmaceutical dude, is buying this upscale brownstone in Manhattan for her and her generic kid (although not a cute generic kid; looks like they ran out of "cute" at Child Actors R Us and had to settle for not-so-cute-but-oh-so-spunky).
A very good story highlighted by very good performances.My hat off to Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart, they're great playing mother and daughter.Country-singer-turned-actor Dwight Yoakam outdoes himself portraying one of the burglars..
A single mom (Meg, played by Jodie Foster) and her vulnerable daughter (Sarah, Kristen Stewart) move into a new house.
A bunch of bad guys (Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam and Jared Leto) break into the place, so Sarah and her daughter hide in the room.
You feel like you're inside the movie, studying everyone and trying to get the edge on them by observing their mannerisms and gaging their personality, just as the people on either side of the panic room are doing.
She knows that she can tell the visiting cops anything she wants because the bad guys have no audio-only pictures while watching them, but follows with a long scene of trying to make the cops believe nothing's wrong in the house.
i really enjoyed this movie,, the idea that a panic room actually exisats is totally awesome i wish i had one,, Meg Foster is great in this,, and Forest Whitaker is pretty good as a bad guy with heart.
the family is attacked , bad guys are looking for some bearer bonds buried in the floorboards of the Panic Room of course , so the bad guys wanna get the teen brat and mom out of there,, all in all i thinnk that this movie is pretty darn good and i would recommend it to anybody..
Dark and frightening at times, Panic Room is aided by a good cast including Forest Whitaker and the always crazy Dwight Yoakam as the gun wielding Raoul.
It's almost as if Fincher has taken a break from the hard-hitting, complex style of his three previous movies, and Panic Room is a relaxed, maybe even 'on-the-side' kind of project.Panic Room has some memorable scenes, and when people ask me 'is it good?', I can only say that it's entertaining, but not to expect too much.
I went in expecting to be thrilled and kept on the edge of my seat like so many people were claiming, but I left the theater baffled and VERY disappointed.You all know the basic plot of the movie (if not, go find out about it), so I don't think I have to go into details on it.
The only way i could have had a minute of pleasure watching "Panic room" is if the "good bad guy"(always an interesting point of departure but totally unexploited here) got away with the money.Fincher obviously prefers morals to pleasure (a quality for a priest, a heavy load for a hollywood filmmaker).
In fact, I was pretty disappointed by David Fincher's last couple of movies, especially 'The Game' (real' boring!), so I was a bit cautious, when started watching this one.
This is a David Fincher movie, The guy who gave movies like "Fight Club" and "Se7en".The only thing that will come out of you after watching this movie is 'what a waste!'.
Also the way Fincher used his camera, like point of vision going through different holes and walls (the type he used in some part of the beginning of Fight Club) THROUGHOUT the movie, is also very irritating.
I like her!6/10: for real bad direction and good concept, plot and story which may glue you to the seat till the end of the movie(of course with irritations inside you)..
PANIC ROOM, Finchers latest movie was a fantastic, simple, yet gripping piece of filmaking.
From the opening title sequence and throughout, this movie had all the elements of a Hitchcock classic, however Fincher brought his dark, raw and gothic-like ambience to it, making this a much watch picture.
This guy, Fincher isn't good, and really, I don't know what people saw in this movie.
It is true Panic Room has some of the finest actors, including Forest Whitaker, Jodie Foster, but if the premise doesn't hold, the story feels a bit off like a comedy.
Jodie Foster isn't real likable here, either, as the mom.The camera-work and David Fincher's direction is very good, especially with the low-angle shots in which the camera roams around the house at about floor level.
In fact you've only just met Jodie Foster and her daughter when the crime begins, and you care no more for them as characters than the criminals who are trying to get inside the "panic room".
After making three bonafide masterpieces in a row -- Se7en, The Game, and his best, Fight Club; Fincher returns with Panic Room.
While Panic Room is far and away better then the typical Hollywood thriller, this is still a studio film, and nothing more.
Panic Room doesn't have the menacing feel or the hell with it attitude of Fincher's previous films, but that doesn't mean it isn't any good.
Since this movie has no plot whatsoever, it is clear that David Fincher just took the money instead of keeping up his high quality of films.
There is some amazing camera work as is usual in Fincher's films, but that does not even come close to making up for the lack of a good story.
David Fincher's directing definitely added to the excitement, and it's nice to see that today's filmmakers have seen Hitchcock movies, and Hitch would have loved blonde Jodie Foster I think.But excitement is also added because the characters are quite unpredictably individuated, particularly the bad guys.Howard Shore's music keeps the suspense keyed up without being obtrusive.When Hollywood does what it does well, we can have a crackling good time!(originally written 5/19/2002).
A movie with such a simple premise, taking place on such a confined set, should be very compact, but David Fincher's thin, disappointing "Panic Room" seems scattered.
I mean, it's a film directed by the brilliant David Fincher, the main character is played by Jodie Foster, and the premise sounded very interesting.
All the crooks had to do was act like they left the hosue to get Foster and her kid out of the panic room.
How is it possible for this movie to have a rating of 7.5 - I thought the folks on the imdb had more taste than this!!!First of all the camera work seemed excessive, the script was implausible and annoyingly, predictable and the movie in its total effect was a great cure for insomnia.I did love the mother daughter dynamic between Meg (Jodie Foster) and Sarah (kristin stewart).
I also love most films Jodie Foster touches in any way and I was hoping for more - she came through with a great performance but had to work with such a pathetic script and that deserves kudos.
Sure enough on their first night in their new home, they are forced to flee to the room as three intruders break in to the house, but trouble is is that what the intruders want is in the panic room itself.From the off we know that Panic Room is going to be oozing David Fincher stylishness, the opening credits sprawled across the Manhattan skyscrape like advertising billboards, perfectly set the tone for the movie to follow.
Panic Room proves what I have suspected for awhile now "if you've seen the trailer, chances are good you've seen the best of it." This movie could have been great.
Right from the start it grips you and doesn't stop right to the final scenes.Jodie Foster (looking younger than her years) and Kristen Stewart do a wonderful job as the mother and daughter trapped in the panic room, the same room which three unscrupulous thieves want to get into.I won't spoil anything but it really keeps you on the edge of your seat at times wondering exactly what's going to happen.The three villains are all great and I particularly liked Forest Whittaker's portrayal of the sympathetic Burnham.I strongly recommend you see this film if you like gripping thrillers.
END SPOILER Also, the fact that I went in thinking that the idea of a "Panic Room" seemed utterly stupid, and left feeling that the plot-device actually did NOT seem to hurt the film, means that Fincher should be congratulated on being able to sweep over the idea either quite well, or quick enough to not let the audience really think about it.The actors all seemed to be acting in there own movies.
This is a very finely crafted thriller.The plot centers around the use of the titled Panic Room by Foster's character and her daughter, when their place is seeming to be burglarised.
Fincher uses camera viewpoints that would move impossibly through walls, windows and pipes, to truly explore the panic room's connections to the outside world, and the house itself, to bring across the interesting concept that the film and story were as much about the property (as a character) than the actual people in it - and I'd not really seen that do before so well, if at all.Very competent thriller, and highly enjoyable.My score: 8/10..
At best I can say that the acting was decent and Fincher has some good moments of direction, but overall a throwaway movie..
Panic Room had the potential to be a very engaging and a very different suspense/action movie.