David Fincher's taut claustrophobic nerve-shredding thriller - Jodie Foster plays Meg,recently divorced and moving into an enourmous Manhattan town house with her teenage daughter Sarah(Kristen Stewert) and discovering at the centre of the house a panic room - mega wealthy owners build these so if you are burgled you close the re-inforced steel doors and the bad guys can't get in. On their first night in the bad guys turn up,thinking the house is empty and are after several million dollars left in a safe by the previous deceased owner - Meg and her daughter flee into the panic room but have one major problem - the only thing the bad guys want is contained in that room - what should have been a place of safety has become a battleground. Fincher constructs this like a game of chess - each move the bad guys make is matched by a counter move by Foster who although initially terrified begins to see ways of turning the sitiation to her advantage.
Soon things are spiralling out of control and the psychological pressure that Foster is under is mirrored by the pressures on the bad guy's. Jared Leto plays Junior who is all bravado but soon begins to crumble with Forrest Whittaker as Burnham who designs these rooms for a living - unfortunatly Junior has brough along Raoul ( a creepy Dwight Yokum)who becomes increasingly unstable as things progress. Soon the pressure is mounting and cracks appear between them - how it all works out I will leave but I found myself feeling increasingly sweaty as things progress. Foster is exellent - initially vurnable but realising that she can control events(up to a point) and all 3 bad guys are differtiated by their different approaches. The use of the large rambling darkened house is very good - Fincher directs with the intensity of Hitchcock or Polanski and the use of under-lighting by Conrad Hall and Darius Konji adds to the creepy atmosphere. It did suprisingly poorly at the box office - Finchers first dud really since Alien 3 which is a shame because its a cracking little movie and well worth the rental.
