By RUSSELL BAILLIE
(Herald rating: * * * * )
If Panic Room's giant hovering-above-New York opening titles lose a certain something on the small screen, then watching the home-invasion thriller Panic Room in the comfort of one's lounge has a certain added creepiness - leave the hall light on for
those trips to the bathroom.
Panic Room makes a virtue of being house-bound, and it helps that it's a nice house, a New York brownstone one freshly bought by Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) with her hefty divorce settlement from rich hubby suffering second-wife syndrome.
The place comes with an impenetrable panic room, complete with video surveillance equipment in case of home invasion. Which is just what happens on her first night there with 11-year-old daughter Sarah.
Three burglars - Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto and Dwight Yoakam - have broken in thinking it was still unoccupied and looking for something belonging to the rich previous owner.
No, of course, Meg hasn't had a chance to hook up the new phone line out of the room.
Yes, of course, she's claustrophobic and there are other complications to the two of them being stuck inside the protective bunker, sweating it out hoping the frustrated trio will go away.
But if the set-up is contrived, director David Fincher's taut, visually inventive execution makes you go with it, as do the performances. Foster is especially impressive as the mother trying to shield her wise-beyond-her-years daughter. She and Kristen Stewart make a highly convincing pairing.
Likewise, the three home invaders are all the more believable for being no criminal masterminds and their personality clashes are soon making them as much of a danger to each other as their victims safely locked behind the panic room's steel doors.
When Fincher isn't shooting in eye-straining murkiness, often his camera is sweeping between walls and up and down floors allowing us to get our bearings on this three-dimensional chess game.
Inevitably the ending isn't quite as ingenious as how it got there - and Fincher reverts to the violently nasty side he's shown before in films like Seven and Fight Club - but Panic Room is the sort of thriller that on video or DVD can quite wear out the edge of your couch. It is also a very good advertisement for stocking up on high-wattage light bulbs.
* Video DVD: Today
* DVD extras: Trailer, cast filmographies
By RUSSELL BAILLIE
(Herald rating: * * * * )
If Panic Room's giant hovering-above-New York opening titles lose a certain something on the small screen, then watching the home-invasion thriller Panic Room in the comfort of one's lounge has a certain added creepiness - leave the hall light on for
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