Panic Room (2002) Panic Room (2002)

See also: _Index | Plot Structure (Panic Room) | Backbeats (Panic Room)

Quick Facts

• Director: David Fincher
• Screenplay: David Koepp
• Starring: Jodie Foster (Meg Altman, recently divorced mother), Kristen Stewart (Sarah Altman, her diabetic daughter), Forest Whitaker (Burnham, panic-room engineer turned reluctant intruder), Jared Leto (Junior, grandson of the brownstone's previous owner), Dwight Yoakam (Raoul, masked third intruder), Patrick Bauchau (Stephen Altman, Meg's ex-husband)
• Cinematography: Conrad W. Hall and Darius Khondji
• Editor: James Haygood and Angus Wall
• Music: Howard Shore
• Runtime: 112 minutes
• Budget: approximately $48 million
• US Box Office: approximately $96 million (worldwide approximately $197 million)
• Release Date: March 29, 2002 (US)
• MPAA Rating: R
• Distributor: Columbia Pictures
• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258000/

Overview

A recently divorced woman and her diabetic eleven-year-old daughter move into a four-floor Upper West Side brownstone the same evening three intruders break in to recover a fortune the previous owner left in a floor safe inside the panic room itself. The mother and daughter make it into the panic room before the intruders reach them; the intruders cannot enter the room they need to enter, and the women cannot leave the room they took refuge in. David Fincher and screenwriter David Koepp build the film around that single architectural deadlock, then break it open through the daughter's medical emergency, an unstable accomplice, and the lead intruder's slowly emerging conscience. The brownstone is the antagonist as much as any of the men inside it — its surveillance monitors, ventilation shafts, intercom, and reinforced steel door are all the equipment of the deadlock, and the film is almost entirely a chamber piece staged inside one building over a single night.