Panic Room (2002)
Directed by David Fincher
Trapped in their New York brownstone's panic room, a hidden chamber built as a sanctuary in the event of break-ins, newly divorced Meg Altman and her young daughter Sarah play a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with three intruders - Burnham, Raoul and Junior - during a brutal home invasion. But the room itself is the focal point because what the intruders really want is inside it.
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What critics say influenced Panic Room
Galloping on to a no-holds-barred finale, Fincher and Koepp plug in plot devices right and left while also boldly snatching from the likes of Hitchcock's “Rear Window” and the wonderful 1967 Terence Young nail-biter “Wait Until Dark”--though they never come close to capturing their predecessors' white-knuckle thrills.
In outline, "Panic Room's" cat-and-mouse maneuvers between good and evil in the same enclosed space is unapologetically derivative, familiar from films as serious as the Audrey Hepburn-starring "Wait Until Dark" and as silly as "Home Alone."
And one hopes Fincher has had fun making a popcorn picture, with his sly references to Rear Window, Rope, and Wait Until Dark (to name but a few) and not a cultural zeitgeist in sight.
"Panic Room" is a modern day take on "Wait Until Dark," rejuvenated by a stylish technician and first rate cast.
Almost the entire thing takes place in one night inside the walls of the same confined set (think Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark), yet the entertainment value Mr. Fincher gets from claustrophobic muck when good people try to survive in the dark is compelling, and the contrast between Panic Room�s climactic outbursts of deplorable bloodshed and the dazzling sunlight of the film�s peaceful epilogue in Central Park makes for a startling dramatic metaphor.
My first thought after I saw this movie was, "Home Alone for adults and without the comedy and Wait Until Dark" I know that sounds a bit weird, but that summed it up for me.
The opening credits, where the titles are placed on buildings, are obviously inspired by the opening credits of North by Northwest.
And the most arresting element of this look -- and the homage to Hitchcock -- is the film's title sequence, in which the credits hang in the midair of Manhattan with an eerie holographic effect, winking at both the discordant opening of "North by Northwest" and 3-D of "Dial M for Murder."
Giving Panic Room four stars comes dangerously close to exalting top-shelf Bond movies to the level of North by Northwest.
Underscoring the insular nature--gimmick?--of the piece, Fincher's opening credit sequence reflects an architectural vision that is not only startling but also recalls the canted lines opening Hitchcock's North by Northwest and the fetishistic iconography found in the same.
The title sequence features the names of the actors and crew appearing as legends on a series of Manhattan skyscrapers, similar to the way the titles appear in the beginning of "North by Northwest."
Galloping on to a no-holds-barred finale, Fincher and Koepp plug in plot devices right and left while also boldly snatching from the likes of Hitchcock's “Rear Window” and the wonderful 1967 Terence Young nail-biter “Wait Until Dark”--though they never come close to capturing their predecessors' white-knuckle thrills.
Two other instances allude to Rear Window�a character using a lamp to blind attackers and a shot that stares directly at an apartment window across the way.
This thriller, in the claustrophobic mode of Rear Window, finds Meg (Jodie Foster), a recent divorcee, and her combative daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart), trapped in the secret vault/bomb shelter/safe room set up by their apartment's previous owner, a paranoid millionaire with a squabbling family.
His house's view of the back yard and neighboring buildings is obviously even modeled after the famous "Rear Window" set.
Something about the opening of David Fincher's "Panic Room" immediately brings to mind Alfred Hitchcock's classic tale of voyeurism, "Rear Window" — the leisurely shots of New York apartment buildings with their banks of faceless windows; the vaguely '50s-style lettering of the credits; the ominous sense that behind each of these windows lies a story, if only we could see inside.
There's retro ambiance that drips with majestic Neo-Gothic portent and shrewdly references movies like "Rear Window" and "Wait Until Dark."
There's some genuinely fun stuff in Panic Room: At one point, the camera seems to swoop into a lock mechanism as nimbly as Tinker Bell; at other times, it appears to pass through walls, as in Hitchcock's Rope.
I'll just catch Rope or The 39 Steps on Turner Classic Movies.
Comparisons to Hitchcock, however, discounting a few familiar-seeming establishing images (a pair of discarded glasses scream "winking homage") and a few swooping crane shots (not to mention the closed-room thriller stunt/trope of Rope), are cosmetic at best.
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And the most arresting element of this look -- and the homage to Hitchcock -- is the film's title sequence, in which the credits hang in the midair of Manhattan with an eerie holographic effect, winking at both the discordant opening of "North by Northwest" and 3-D of "Dial M for Murder."
The present world has long exceeded the anxieties of, say, 1968's Night of the Living Dead, whose characters turned the home into a trench against external threats; by 2002, news reports, world events, pop psychology, and urban legend have combined to assert that the home has already fallen to moral and mortal invaders.
This would be beside the point had not Panic Room evidently aspired to be a parable of rape through the violation of a feminine sanctuary--something along the lines of Marnie perhaps, or more accurately of the Manderly arc of Rebecca--and an indictment of the audience's perverse anticipation of the character's suffering.
This would be beside the point had not Panic Room evidently aspired to be a parable of rape through the violation of a feminine sanctuary--something along the lines of Marnie perhaps, or more accurately of the Manderly arc of Rebecca--and an indictment of the audience's perverse anticipation of the character's suffering.
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In outline, "Panic Room's" cat-and-mouse maneuvers between good and evil in the same enclosed space is unapologetically derivative, familiar from films as serious as the Audrey Hepburn-starring "Wait Until Dark" and as silly as "Home Alone."
"Panic Room" is "Home Alone" for grown-ups.
My first thought after I saw this movie was, "Home Alone for adults and without the comedy and Wait Until Dark" I know that sounds a bit weird, but that summed it up for me.
A "Home Alone" film that is staged like "Rosemary's Baby," but is not as well-conceived as either of those.
He doesn't get jazzed up, the way Scorsese does when he's showing off, as in those ridiculous close-ups of balls zooming around a pool table in "The Color of Money."