Panic Room - Directed by David Fincher
I think Panic Room’s success is that it is a thriller that seems almost entirely plausible. So many thrillers end up relying on story elements or character decisions that make viewers want to shout at the screen but Panic Room doesn’t stir in me the urge to yell. I realized when I sat down to write about it that the reason for me not yelling is because the way the film is written and the story plays out, if I shouted advice it would fall on the ears of people who’ve already come to the same if not a better decision forward and are enacting it. The characters in the film all ask the same questions I would ask. Fincher and screenwriter David Koepp throw down a gauntlet with this film. We’re going to dare you to find a crack in this premise, in these characters, in this story. They do this by presenting the entire film like a chess board. The audience can see all the pieces, we know the rules that the heroes and villains are playing by and we learn very quickly that the winner will simply be the side that plays the game better. The film’s creators go a step farther in this challenge because they never cheat. There’s no Deus ex machina. Everything here plays out like it actually might were this situation real.
The opposing sides in this film are lead by Jodie Foster and Forest Whitaker. Foster plays Meg, a wealthy divorcee who is spending her first night in a newly purchased Manhattan brownstone with her teenage daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart). Whitaker plays Burnham, a security worker lured into home invasion by the promise that millions are hidden in this brownstone by its former owner. Burnham is at first just along for the ride because of his expertise in the film’s titular device. The house includes a "panic room" on the third of four stories--a reinforced retreat with independent supplies of air, electricity and water, which can be locked indefinitely to keep the occupants safe. Burnham's day job: "I spent the last 12 years of my life building rooms like this specifically to keep out people like us." Burnham is joined by Junior (Jared Leto) and Raoul (Dwight Yoakam). Junior brought Burnham and Raoul onto the job, and Burnham hates it that Raoul brought along a gun. Their plan is to get in, find the money, and get out. According to Junior's information, the house is empty. It is not, and soon Meg and Sarah are locked in the safe room, the three men are outside, and it looks like a stalemate except that neither side can afford to concede.
Fincher makes sure we know the full layout of the brownstone. In fact he’s so meticulous he shows us twice. Once during a house tour between Meg, Sarah, and their realtor and again using CGI enhancement that allows the camera to glide from the upstairs bedroom, float down two floors, passes through a keyhole, and then rises back upstairs again. Fincher uses shots like this throughout the film both to utilize state of the art technology to tell his story but also to keep the second house tour from appearing like a strange tangent plopped into the film. We can learn two things about David Fincher from this decision. The first is he’s a visual virtuoso and the use of CGI to enhance his skills feels like a natural progression for the director. The second lesson is Panic Room fits right into his oeuvre of psychological gamesmanship, a feature of nearly every one of his previous films. He needs us to know the house because unlike a standard chess match, the players frequently wind up on opposite sides of the board and the result is incredibly nerve wracking.
I have deliberately not described much of the strategy itself. That would be cheating. Once you know what everyone wants and how the safe room works, the plot should be allowed to simply unfold. There is a neat twist in the fund of knowledge about the room; Burnham, who builds them, knows a lot more about how they work, their strengths and limitations, than Meg and Sarah, who start out basically knowing only how to run inside and lock the door.
Jodie Foster is unsurprisingly spellbinding as Meg. She has the gutsy, brainy resilience of a stubborn scrapper, and when all other resources fail her she can still think fast and obliquely, like a chessmaster hiding one line of attack inside another.
The intruders are ill-matched, which is the idea. Burnham has the knowledge, Junior has the plan, and Raoul has the gun. Once they are all inside the house and know the plan, therefore, Junior is not entirely necessary, unless the others are positively determined to split the loot three ways. On the other hand, Burnham hates violence, and Raoul is such a wild card that every scene he occupies is a nail biter.
A late stage game of chess is incredibly intriguing. Pieces have been lost and the result is a chaotic board. Players have to start improvising with pieces that weren’t necessarily designed for the jobs they’ll need to accomplish to win. Because the board is more empty is harder to disguise your strategy. The moves must be more subtle. Every chosen move cuts off the the other possibilities that were available before someone’s finger comes off the piece. The prospect of defeat hangs more and more heavily over the board. This is exactly how Panic Room unfolds. Even in its final minutes the agreed upon rules still apply but all the choices the players made throughout have limited the choices left to be played out.
