Panic Room

Panic Room is a 2002 American thriller film directed by David Fincher. The film stars Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart as a mother and daughter whose new home is invaded by burglars, played by Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, and Dwight Yoakam. The script was written by David Koepp, whose screenplay was inspired by news coverage in 2000 about panic rooms.

The film was Fincher's fifth feature film, following Fight Club (1999). Fincher and Koepp brought together a crew of people with whom each had worked with before. The house and its panic room were built on a Raleigh Studios lot. Nicole Kidman was originally cast as the mother, but she left after aggravating a previous injury. Her departure threatened the completion of the film, but Foster quickly replaced Kidman. The filmmakers used computer-generated imagery to create the illusion of the film camera moving through the house's rooms. Foster became pregnant during the shooting schedule, so filming was suspended until after she gave birth. The film's production cost .

The film was commercially released in the United States and Canada on , 2002 by Sony Pictures Releasing. The film grossed on its opening weekend. In the United States and Canada, it grossed . In other territories, it grossed for a worldwide total of . The film was positively reviewed by critics, who commended Fincher's direction and Foster's performance.

Plot

Recently divorced Meg Altman and her eleven-year-old daughter, Sarah, move into a four-story brownstone in New York City's Upper West Side. The house's previous owner, a reclusive millionaire, had installed a "panic room" to protect himself from intruders. The room is reinforced with concrete and steel and features a thick steel door. It also includes an extensive security system with multiple surveillance cameras and a public address system.

On Meg and Sarah's first night in the house, three men break in: Junior, the previous owner's grandson; Burnham, an employee of the home's security company, who built the panic room; and Raoul, a thug brought along to the break in by Junior, without Burnham's knowledge. They intend to steal bearer bonds locked inside a floor safe in the panic room.

When Meg wakes during the night, she sees the men on the security cameras and rushes to the panic room with Sarah. To force them out, the men pump propane gas into the room's air vents. Meg ignites the gas while she and Sarah cover themselves with fireproof blankets; the ignited propane leaves Junior badly burned. Meg taps into the main telephone line and calls her philandering ex-husband, Stephen. As she tries to explain their situation, the intruders cut the line, ending the call.

When all attempts to breach the room fail, Junior gives up on the robbery but lets slip that there is more money in the safe than he initially disclosed. When he tries to leave, Raoul fatally shoots him and forces Burnham to continue with the robbery. Stephen arrives and is immediately taken hostage. Raoul severely beats him, ensuring that Meg sees it on the security camera. Sarah, a diabetic, suffers a seizure as her glucagon syringes are in her bedroom.

Raoul tricks Meg into thinking it is safe to temporarily leave the panic room. When she leaves to retrieve Sarah's medication, the men enter the room with Sarah inside. Meg throws the med kit in just as Burnham closes the door, inadvertently crushing Raoul's hand. She pleads with the men to give Sarah her medication, which Burnham eventually does. Two police officers arrive at the house, following up on Stephen's earlier 911 call and complaints from the neighbors. To protect Sarah, Meg convinces the officers that everything is fine, and they leave. Meanwhile, Burnham opens the safe and finds $22 million in bearer bonds inside.

As the men prepare to leave with Sarah as a hostage, Meg leads them into an ambush, using a sledgehammer to knock Raoul over a banister and into a stairwell. As Burnham flees, the injured Raoul crawls back up and overpowers Meg, preparing to bludgeon her with the sledgehammer. Hearing Sarah's terrified screams, Burnham rushes back and shoots Raoul, killing him. The police, alerted by Meg's earlier odd behavior, return in force and apprehend Burnham. He drops the bearer bonds, and they scatter into the wind.

A few days later, Meg and Sarah search the newspaper for a new, smaller home, having recovered from their ordeal.

Cast

{| class="infobox" style="font-size:100%;"

! Actor

! class="unsortable" |

! Role

| ...

Jodie Foster stars as Meg Altman, a recently divorced woman who, with her daughter Sarah, looks for a new home in New York City. Nicole Kidman was originally cast as Meg, Fincher refused to edit the film to receive a PG-13 rating (parental guidance for children under 13) from the Motion Picture Association of America, It was commercially released in the United States and Canada on March 29, 2002. It was screened in and grossed on its opening weekend. It surpassed The Matrix (1999) to have the biggest Easter holiday-weekend opening and also had the third biggest opening to date for a non-supernatural thriller film, following Hannibal (2001) and Ransom (1996). Audiences polled by CinemaScore, during the opening-weekend, gave Panic Room a "B" grade on an A+ to F scale. The audience demographic was 53% female and 47% male, and 62% of audience members were aged 25 years and older. The film went on to gross at the US and Canadian box office and in other territories' box offices for a worldwide total of . (In 2006, the film had a re-release in Hong Kong that grossed , increasing the total to .) In the United States and Canada, Panic Room ranks fifth among David Fincher's films in box office gross. Adjusted for inflation, Panic Room ranks third. Worldwide, unadjusted for inflation, it ranks fifth.

Critical reception

Critics called Panic Room "a high-tension narrative". They compared the film to the works of Alfred Hitchcock, both positively and negatively. Several critics thought the film was too mainstream after Fincher's Fight Club. Of 36 reviews, Metacritic categorized 23 as positive, 13 as mixed, and 0 as negative, and it gave weighted average score of 65 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal said, "Seven was stylishly gloomy, and Fight Club was smarmily pretentious, while Panic Room has been admirably stripped down to atmosphere as a function of architecture, and action as a consequence of character." Morgenstern commended the characters Meg and Sarah as feminist heroines and also called the home invaders "intriguing". He also applauded Foster's performance and the film's cinematography, and he said to Koepp's script as "all worked out too". Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, describing Panic Room as close to "the ideal of a thriller existing entirely in a world of physical and psychological plausibility." Ebert wrote, "There are moments when I want to shout advice at the screen, but just as often the characters are ahead of me." Ebert also called Fincher "a visual virtuoso", and applauded Foster's performance as "spellbinding".

Home media

Panic Room was first released on VHS and DVD on September 17, 2002 by Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment. The studio produced VHS copies for rental only, believing that owners of DVD players were more likely to buy the film. The studio used the design from the theatrical release poster for the video cover, where Fincher had wanted a black cover that would differ from the poster. Though previsualization supervisor Ron Frankel wanted to include materials to show storyboard animation, the DVD was released as a single-disc edition with no audio commentary or other features. Fincher also chose not to include on the DVD scenes filmed with Nicole Kidman before she was replaced by Jodie Foster. though it ranked first in DVD rentals. In March 2004, the studio released a special edition DVD, which consisted of three discs, two which provided featurettes of the pre-production, production, and post-production processes for the film. The DVD also had several commentary tracks, including one by the director. Author John T. Caldwell cites the special edition DVD of Panic Room as an example of demonstrating directorial control to "aesthetically elevate" the film.

Columbia Pictures sold the television rights for Panic Room to Turner Broadcasting and CBS, who shared the rights over five years. In September 2004, Turner aired the film on channels TBS and TNT for 12 months, and afterward, CBS aired the film three times in an 18-month span. Turner resumed airing Panic Room for 30 months after CBS's turn.

In 2014, The A.V. Club listed Panic Room as one of 15 films which (at the time) notably lacked a Blu-ray release. A decade later, Fincher would go on to supervise a 4K remaster of the film, which Sony would ultimately release on Ultra HD Blu-ray on , 2025, in a special Steelbook edition also containing a standard Blu-ray disc and including the special features originally produced for DVD, marking its official debut on both formats.

Accolades

Howard Shore won from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers an ASCAP Award in the Top Box Office Film music category for his scores for Panic Room and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The Art Directors Guild nominated Panic Room for the Excellence in Production Design for a Contemporary Film Award. The Online Film Critics Society Award nominated Panic Room for Best Editing. Panic Room won an award at the 3rd Golden Trailer Awards for having the Best Horror/Thriller film trailer, beating fellow nominees Signs, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Jurassic Park III, and No Such Thing. For her performance in the film, Jodie Foster was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Actress.

Remake

In December 2024, Sony Pictures began development of a Brazilian remake with Ísis Valverde attached to the lead role.

Plot

Cast

Critical reception

Home media

Accolades

Remake

See also

Notes

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

Further reading

External links