Panic Room review

Panic Room does not feature on any iteration of the top 1000 films of all time. However, as I watched it recently, I'm giving my views nonetheless.

Recently divorced mother Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her diabetic daughter (Sarah) have just moved into a new four-storey house in New York City's Upper West Side. The house has its own panic room. After Meg and Sarah are invaded by a trio of burglars the ring-leader Junior (Jared Leto,) the psychotic Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) and the more compassionate Burnham (Forest Whitaker,) mother and daughter take shelter in the panic room. However, that's exactly where the home invaders want to be too.

Panic Room was David Fincher's fifth full-length directorial film. He is well-represented on the 2024 edition of the top 1000 films of all time with 8/12 of his films being featured on there. It's no surprise Alien 3 isn't on the list - maybe it would be on a list of the 1000 worsen films of all time. And perhaps Mank and the Killer are too modern to be featured. But it was a surprise that Panic Room didn't make it onto the list. Don't ask me how the mind of an IMDB audience works, but they obviously love Fincher as the majority of his films make some appearance on this list.

Panic Room had all the hallmarks of your classic Fincher thriller including low lighting, tight camera angles and morally grey characters. It also had a rousing score by frequent collaborator Howard Shore. However, what separated Panic Room from other Fincher thrillers was its sense of claustrophobia. Much of the film takes place in the Altman's panic room meaning you feel every second of its stuffy atmosphere.

 Having been exhausted by the multiple sets on Fight Club, Fincher wanted to direct something far simpler and more pared down. Considering the multiple production issues he had including Jodie Foster being a last-minute replacement for Nicole Kidman (who still appears in a tiny voiceover role) or having to reshoot some of the film with Foster returning on maternity leave, I'm not sure whether this production was much simpler for him really.

Regardless of the simplicity of the shoot, I still thought Panic Room was an entertaining film. It might have lacked some of the social commentary of his most famous film Fight Club or the gore of Se7en, but it had a cracking cast. Jodie Foster, Jared Leto, Nicole Kidman and Forest Whitaker share four acting Oscars between them while Kristen Stewart is also Oscar-nominated. This was only her third film, but proved to be her breakout role. 

Jared Leto brought a great manic energy to Junior who desperately tries to keep control while his well-thought strategy to rob the panic room crumbles around him. He contrasted well with the more calm and controlled Forest Whitaker. However, I think the dark horse of the three was the psychotic Dwight Yoakam who brought a scarily calm energy to the role of Raoul. Although Yoakam is better known as a country music singer this was definitely not his first rodeo as he starred in the earlier 1996 film Sling Blade.

True, as the film progresses, it goes get slightly more absurd eventually concluding in an anti-climatic disappointing ending. 

*spoilers to follow*

Having spent much of the film locked up in the panic room with minimal mobile phone signal, Meg finally gets through to 911 only for them to put her on hold, which rather beggared belief. This was a plot point a bit too fantastical to really believe. In the final confrontation between Meg, Sarah and Raoul, it isn't the women who kill Raoul, but Burnham who has a change of heart. 

This change of heart means he is inevitably caught by the police. Right at the start, it was established that Burnham was the most compassionate of the three burglars due to his outright declaration of not wanting to kill anybody, so I guess I could buy him coming back to save the women. However, Panic Room received a lot of critical praise for its feminist themes - much of the film prior to the climax shows the female Meg and Sarah outsmarting the male burglars yet they were ultimately saved by a man - Burnham. 

True, it might be unlikely for a mother and twelve-year-old girl to overpower a murderous man like Raoul, but we already saw Meg's intelligence. I would have been willing to suspend my disbelief to have seen her fatally outsmart Raoul. While Sarah was attacking Raoul from behind, perhaps Meg could have found the wherewithal to have picked up Raoul's gun and shoot him. To not have done so, slightly countermanded the feminist messaging. But maybe I'm looking too much into it.

The film ultimately ends on a bit of damp squib with Meg and Sarah discussing new places to live. Perhaps this is what stopped it from featuring on the top 1000 films of all time - that and all the unnecessary slow-motion. 

Although it didn't earn its place on the top 1000 films of all time, Panic Room was still an entertaining and thrilling film to watch. 

Into the Wild review

 Number 144 on the top 1000 films of all time is Sean Penn's 2007 biopic Into the Wild.

Into the Wild tells the real-life story of Christopher Mccandless (Emile Hirsch), a recent college graduate. Disillusioned with city and capitalist life, he donates his life savings, cuts up his credits cards, adopts the moniker 'Alexander Supertramp' and backpacks around the US before finally going to Alaska to live off the land. Along the way, he meets a number of people who change how he thinks about life.

One reason why I think Into the Wild made this list was because of the universability of its themes. Christopher is one of many confused and jaded young people who go backpacking in attempts to 'find themselves. In 2019, I volunteered on a French farm and my host told me that he had deliberately moved to the countryside because he was sick of the cut-throat nature of the city.

While backpacking, Christopher finds himself in LA and staying at a homeless shelter. Already fearing he's becoming corrupted by city life, he hits the road without even staying the night. But these are themes and ideas I've seen in my everyday life. I've heard many people say they would like to pull a Henry David Thoreau and live in a hand-built log cabin in the woods.

And while Christopher idolises Thoreau and is regularly quoting him, he is far cry from being an ace survivalist/woodsman or a relatable protagonist ... at least for me anyway. I have head some people criticise him as being arrogant or naive for believing he could live off the land especially in a land as unforgiving as Alaska. And it was his arrogance that did make him a little unlikable. Sure it's all well and good having books on Alaska's flora and fauna and receiving crash courses on how to hunt and prepare game, but book knowledge can only take you so far. At some point, you need practice and experience before throwing yourself into the deep end. Although I definitely wouldn't fare much better.

But this arrogance also obscures Chris' motivations for leaving his home in the first place. It is revealed that he and sister were the product of an illegitimate relationship making them bastard children and the object of resentment for his father who is also abusive. However, I don't think this was portrayed clearly enough and I think more could have been done to demonstrate their fractious relationship. Not to mention, Chris comes from quite a privileged background and arguably he has little to be unhappy about. Having said that, just because some people have it worse doesn't therefore then invalidate Chris' experience.

This was a tragic film, but because of Chris' cloudy motivations, I was feeling less sad sympathy for him and more for the people he met and left behind along his way. There's the ageing hippie couple Rainey (Brian H. Dierker) and Jan (Catherine Keener) who has a fractious relationship with her estranged son from another marriage. This turmoil has ate away with her relationship with Rainey. But Chris helps to rekindle their love for each other and learns about family along the way.

Next you have teenage singer Tracy (Kristen Stewart) who forms an unrequited attraction for Chris. Finally, we come to the always wonderful Hal Holbrook as Ron Franz. He is an ageing veteran who lost his wife and son to a drunk driver. Now he spends his days pottering in his leather workshop as he is too afraid to face the real world. In perhaps the most heart-breaking film of the film, fearing his family name will die with him, he asks whether he can adopt Christ as his grandson. Christ replies that they'll discuss this upon his return.

While this was a powerful film with relatable themes, which sometimes broke my heart, I think this was more down to Sean Penn's writing of the suppoting characters, rather than of Christopher Mccandless himself.