PANIC ROOM (2002)

This David Fincher film features actors Jody Foster, Kristen Stewart, Jared Leto and Forest Whitaker..

Welcome to my blog post for David Fincher's Panic Room !!.

The film “Panic Room” was made in 2002 starring Jody Foster and Kristen Stewart as well as Jared Leto and Forest Whitaker and as a precursor is often thought about the changeover seen thematically in David Fincher’s work. It was in production prior to 9/11 and there were thoughts about it being obviously scripted. The security aspect was heightened post 9/11. There was so much about video surveillance, fear, and dis-ease in a certain sense with all that was going on. In the poetics of space module, some of it happens to be highlighted because it breaks down some of the philosophical notions of what it means to approach a house. When thinking about Paper Street house in Fight Club, we think about the Paper Street Paper Company which is dilapidated, isolated but it is a place where we witness Tyler Durden talking to himself, daydreaming, playing, and musing to himself. There is a place perhaps of toxic masculinity but also a space of creative energy which could be detrimental, harmful, self-destructive which also gives rise to Project Mayhem but the area of that house to a certain degree allows all of these things to take shape.

In the first chapter in Poetics of Space about houses we think of the image of the house and see how flip flopped they are in these two different films. In Tyler Durden’s place to daydream and create all these diabolical protests of radical groups between Project Mayhem and Fight club, this is an outsider rebellion, a split personality daydream that gets bought at large. What is seen in the Panic Room is the exact opposite. With Jody Foster’s character, Meg and her daughter entering this house it is their first night in a new home. She is clearly wealthy, recently divorced from a wealthy man who has quickly moved on with someone else. But what the difference in scene here is would be an unsettling that does not allow a character to daydream or experience any of the things regarding security that are necessary to make things come about. This is fascinating between these two films because of a real distinction between the male and female protagonists. Meg becomes an ultra-warrior figure throughout the course of this film which is seen as she encounters evil doers that enter her house unsettling her reality.

When Fincher pitched this film, he said he sold the studio on this by telling them it was a cross between Straw Dogs from 1971 and Rear Window from 1954. Panic Room is set in New York and is a very microcosmic film. One is drawn from the opening scenes very clearly into the town house where we remain for the entire duration of the film. The basic scenario is that Jody Foster and her daughter enter the house, buy it and while there we learn of her relationship with her ex-husband, perhaps still coping with his loss and moving on to see some other woman not too far away. The central characters are unaware of a buried treasure in the Panic Room. It is all about the explanation of their unawareness that other people are coming to find hidden treasure in their home.

This sets forth the action of the film. Many thought the film was unsuccessful and it is often compared to Alien three which is a film Fincher did not like himself. It was an industry film. There is an interesting presentation of a female heroic figure and in a certain sense defying some of the terms which we have been set up to accept early on. Her bravery, resourcefulness certainly carries and picks up on a lot of the themes Fincher has been preoccupied with previously with his undercurrent of a city. It rains throughout the entirety of this film as it also does with his Seven film. We do not get to explore much of New York but know from the beginning it is a NY story. It is also a film which turns upside down this whale notion in the Poetics of Space whereas the Protagonist of Fight Club has nothing but time to patch up the destruction of his condo, his self-destructive acts, his fight club, Project Mayhem and his terrorism. There is a weird, odd symmetry and this is completely opposite. All of these things happen to Meg in the film. The divorce just got settled and it does not make sense that she should even be in this house. There is an extraordinary amount of wealth that she has perhaps privilege but also of the things that make up for this beautiful townhouse and the sanctity that it seems to go with is so dissimilar to what is seen in Fight Club which unravels quickly. The plot of it is a claustrophobic one.

This film is locked in and in a sense almost prison like where the characters are caught in the confines of their own home which should be about freedom, security, and sanctity. One of the things Fincher said about the film is that he wanted it to be a burglary from the point of view of a fish inside of a fishbowl looking out and watching the cats. This film brings in a type of terrorist nightmare closer to home in a very domestic way. There are connections between fears and paranoia that cannot be helped in the U.S. post 9/11. Burnham who is played by Forrest Whitaker in the Panic Room is one of the robbers who enters the home with intricate knowledge of the safety systems he has helped to put in place which in the panic room is the anonymous place and setting of so much of this film. The big trick of the film itself is how to get into the place where the hostages are inside of which is the central thrust of what drives the kind of tension/drama of this film.

There is an interesting question between the houses, one of which is a beautiful town house with an elevator backyard and well over ten million dollars if not more yet in a way is also a place of claustrophobia fear and what is the exact opposite of what is witnessed in Fight Club. Panic Room has a McGuffin theory where they do not know what it is in the house that the burglars want but the gimmick is they are there to get into the panic room where the mother and daughter have locked themselves up in. The idea of the diabetic daughter and her mother who are in a room confined in a place the burglars cannot access is about restriction. They do not know there is millions of dollars under the floor in that very room. Jared Leto’s character becomes an inept relative who knows and lies about the inheritance. The Yocum character Raoul is ski masked and does not care about and has no regard for human life. The plot gets interesting when they want to get the mother and daughter out blowing off half of Jared Leto’s face. It works on one's level of paranoia and revolves around surveillance. Cameras are present so they know they are being watched and there is a moment of a suspense builder where the mother tries to grab the cell phone crashing the lamp instead. There is a play with the conception of the male/female hero. The ex-husband gets pummeled and one of the crooks as to turn on the other to survive. There is a strange moral deliberate ambiguity where we are left to wonder what happened to him. Forrest Whitaker’s character feels regret, and we feel sorry for him by the film’s close. The odd ending closes on both the mother and daughter talking about the downsizing of properties when choosing their new place.

There are gender differences also in terms of how we understand gender roles. There was a vogue around the Y2K phenomenon and people believed the world was turned upside down because of digits on the wall. It is raining when the cop arrives and knows something is up. The daughter is stuck in the panic room alone with Forest Whitaker after receiving a diabetic injection and the mother must pretend nothing is wrong. Home is supposed to be a safe haven. There is nothing more terrifying than what the characters are enduring having been unsettled and disturbed as they have in their new home. The child is presented in a different way despite her position. It fits to add paranoia perfectly for the time and there was a lot regarding the fear of the unknown. In this case, it was the fear of invasion. The Space reading gives insight to things we may take for granted. There is a complexity when objects are used to create disconnection. Panic Room is about the possibility of escape. The film itself plays around with dilemmas between a mother and daughter as well as an ex-husband. The connection made to Rear Window is when messages are being used to communicate with the outside world by using morse code.

Meghan L. Grady