“Panic Room” Review: Contained Thrills

Despite its small scope, Fincher still excites audiences in his one-location thriller.

Following grandiose masterpieces that defined both their genres and decade of inception in Se7en and Fight Club, with other expensive stints taking up the director’s remaining energy like The Game, Fincher needed a return to the regular. Surreal worlds where acid rain perpetually floods and the primary colors are green, blue, and black; Fincher was at a point in his career where he had the reputation to target big names, and the impressive filmography to back up any desired venture. Thus, Fincher went on his journey to return to the quaint thriller; Hitchcockian knots of tension that rely on spatial geometry, careful blocking of actors, and clever set pieces to effectively invoke more tension in the viewer than the latest blockbuster where the threat of an apocalypse is somehow less terrifying than a misplaced shadow out of the corner of one’s eye. In this regard, Panic Room mostly succeeds. Having known very little about the film going in, I was not expecting such a tight and unique script for one of Fincher’s less popular films. Although a terrified Jodie Foster on the poster clued me in on the star power behind this project, I hardly knew of any of the other big names attached, the story behind its production, or even the complete premise. This was the ideal means of entering Panic Room, as many of the film’s strengths are found in familiar cliches iterated upon by masters of their craft. While excess certainly exists with Fincher’s unbridled intrigue in developing technologies, the constrained script manages to reign in the cinematography to a somewhat less interruptive degree. After all, there is only so much one can do in a single setting, but when the talent behind the tension is as great as it is here, even repetition can become entertaining. Scaling back the plot, Panic Room proves itself to be a complete package because it never aims as high as the director’s other projects, but in doing so, demonstrates the pure cinematic strengths of those behind the camera.

Foster stars in this collected cast of character actors and big names that makes a seemingly simple story complex through its interesting personalities. We first meet Meg Altman, recently divorced mother of Sarah, as the two are shown the single location the film will soon isolate itself to. In this sequence, the audience is already treated to effective characterization and dialogue. Meg is steely, but unconfident, rolled over even by her scootering daughter who refuses to listen on the guided tour. However, these aren’t caricatures of a mother-daughter dynamic. The first night in their new home, Meg breaks her attitudinal persona to ask Sarah to keep the lights on; it’s too scary for this rebellious teen to fall asleep. It’s these moments where the facade breaks that character and humanity is injected into would be stock-roles if not for a tight script and effective cast. Side characters are just as memorable; days after viewing, I still remember the pretentiousness of the real estate agents who’ve spent too much of their lives looking down at others from the high rises they sell, despite the fact they’re in the movie for all of five minutes. Every character is not only unique in their personalities, but made human in their execution by a stellar cast and script that successfully thrills despite the deceptively basic premise.

The opening scene also demonstrates Fincher’s filmmaking prowess; Sarah is being given a tour of a potential home, whereas Fincher is giving the audience a tour of the war-zone they will inhabit. The opening acts as serviceable contextualization to explain the exact dimensions and elements of the house that will be used in later set pieces. It’s the sign of a knowledgeable director and a film that will use all of the available elements afforded by its premise. Fincher’s signature labels the rest of the cinematography as distinctly his own with an overly mobile camera and fascination with emerging technologies. Fincher’s style is one of cold calculation and pessimistic filth presented with a camera that is startlingly confident with its fluidity in such terrifying locations. Down to the detail, Fincher will indulge in cinematic complexities if it means he can maximize the potential for technical play informed by narrative. Fincher has also developed into a master of tension: both in pacing and camerawork, Fincher is capable of turning any scene into a thrill. However, while Panic Room’s cinematography is never offensive, I found Fincher’s obsession with a digital camera and falsified movements, masking through walls, and other technical tricks that break the reality of this close-quarters story to be more distracting than in his previous films. Even when the apparatus wasn’t designed in a computer, I found the sheer amount of pans and tilts to be at times disorienting when characters are dashing down stairs or sneakily gliding through hallways. Fincher manages to reign in his excitement in later projects, but in Panic Room, with its narrative comparatively lighter to Fincher’s other projects, allowed the director the room to experiment. However, I felt the greatest tension on a single close-up, when the camera stayed static, straight on the tense stare of a focused Meg. Restraint is what makes this film’s moments their most effective, and with such freedoms afforded by a light premise, Fincher got his fill of playful cinematography that sometimes breaks the illusion of a tense, contained thriller.

An excessive camera, and a dying set of lights. The shadows at times completely obscure characters to a frustrating degree. With such unique faces and performances on screen, with the humanity embedded into these characters from their actors' particularities, it’s a shame that for much of the film the stars’ lighting makes them dull instead of shine. While never as offensive as the modern tradition of lighting actors with a black hole, I found Panic Room’s gaffing to be particularly off at times. Similarly, the potential for fantastic tension through blocking is seen, but never fully realized. Throughout the well paced plot, the characters are thrown into situations that are all clever flips on this simple premise that keep the audience engaged despite the fact the lead hardly moves for the majority of the film. However, I rarely felt tense, which came as a result of the unfulfilled use of the location's geometry. Yes, Fincher will point the camera upward and have a program digitally mask the floor so characters seem close together, but it is only in its most analog and restrained moments where Panic Room succeeds in geographical tension. Shots where Foster is the center subject with Whittaker or Leto just out of frame are much more terrifying than Fincher’s technical tricks for their required suspension of disbelief. While impressive at times, Panic Room is at its strongest when sticking to subtlety.

This principle tracks both in the film’s script and when it is translated on screen. Fincher’s camera may be excessive at times, but the screenplay never crosses a threshold of satisfying ambiguity. Set ups are introduced through clever hints instead of being overtly placed under a close-up acting as magnifying glass. Much of the story’s underlying meaning is subtlety informed upon by an attentive viewer; if one so desired, they could invest themselves into Sarah as a character. Because of the well written script and injected depth from a fantastic Foster, Panic Room becomes a film as thematically interested in the many ways one experiences “divorce” in life, just as much as it is a contained thriller most interested in getting the audience to white-knuckle the arms of their chairs. Notably, the script manages to balance this desired effect with its exact opposite, and it’s in this humor where we see even more of Fincher’s unique signature. Despite the oppressive lighting and sickening color palette, Panic Room spawned more laughs than recent comedies. Where the cinematography at times fails to do the same, Panic Room’s script lands in a satisfying and undeniably entertaining middle ground between comedic excess and ambiguous tension.

While Panic Room generated from the desire to reign in Fincher’s complexity, the film still became a production nightmare. When masters of their crafts are simultaneous lifelong students, their curiosity will undeniably overshadow initial hesitations. I can’t help that Fincher was so excited to try his new toys, and neither could he. Meaning, Panic Room’s few faults come off less as distracting interruptions of a perfectly pristine experience, but simple markings of a scientist at work, experimenting with his craft in real time.