Panic Room

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Movie
German title Panic Room
Original title Panic Room
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2002
length 112 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
JMK 14
Rod
Director David Fincher
script David Koepp
production Ceán Chaffin ,
Judy Hofflund ,
David Koepp,
Gavin Polone
music Howard Shore
camera Conrad W. Hall ,
Darius Khondji
cut James Haygood ,
Angus Wall
occupation

Panic Room is an American thriller directed by David Fincher from 2002. The stars are Jodie Foster , Kristen Stewart and Forest Whitaker .

action

Meg Altman, who has recently separated from her husband, is moving with her 11-year-old daughter Sarah into a house in Manhattan ( New York City ) that previously belonged to a physically disabled millionaire. This had a special feature set up, namely a so-called " panic room ". It is a shelter hidden behind a mirror that has been converted into a kind of bunker with reinforced concrete walls several centimeters thick, surveillance monitors, separate ventilation and its own telephone connection.

The panic room helps the new residents on the evening they move in when three intruders break into the supposedly empty house. Unfortunately, the special telephone line has not yet been activated, so that contact with the police is not possible. One of the burglars, Junior, is the grandson of the former house owner; another, Burnham, an employee of the security company that set up the bunker. The third burglar, the masked and armed Raoul, was brought in by Junior without Burnham's notice.

Meg and Sarah escape to the shelter, not knowing that the prey the criminals are after is in this room of all places. They only find out about this when they communicate with the intruders via the surveillance monitors. It is said to be several million dollars. This creates a conflict situation with extreme psychological tension because mother and daughter do not want to leave the panic room for security reasons and the crooks cannot penetrate. To force the two of them to give up, the crooks lead gas into the room via the ventilation, but ultimately only harm themselves, since Meg - protected by fire blankets - ignites the flammable gas and thus seriously injures Junior.

Meg and Sarah try to establish contact with the outside world by sending " SOS " with a flashlight through a ventilation pipe leading to the house facade. When the blinked neighbor on the opposite side does not react accordingly, Meg succeeds in connecting the internal telephone to the public network via a cable hidden in the wall. She manages to alert her ex-husband before the burglars can cut the line again.

Later, a violent argument breaks out among the unsuccessful burglars about the distribution of the hoped-for loot, because Junior "gossips" when he calculates to the two accomplices how much money he would get if he inherited legally. Junior only told the other two about $ 3 million when it actually came to $ 22 million. When Junior tries to escape, Raoul kills him with a shot in the head. At that very moment Stephen Altman (Meg's husband) appears at the back door, is taken hostage by Raoul and brutally beaten.

The situation is made more difficult by the fact that Sarah suffers from hypoglycemia . Your blood sugar level drops rapidly from stress. Since there is nothing sugary in the panic room, Sarah has a seizure. To prevent her from falling into a coma and possibly dying, Meg has to leave the panic room and get a glucagon injection for Sarah. This is a dramatic turnaround because the criminals manage to get into the panic room in their absence. Meg manages to throw the syringe into the panic room before the door closes and one of Raoul's hands is trapped. However, Sarah is now in the power of the gangsters in the bunker. Since Meg now has Raoul's pistol, they don't want to leave the panic room anymore. To save Sarah, Burglar Burnham gives her the injection.

The situation is finally exacerbated by the fact that two police officers appear whom Meg's husband had called because of their excited call. Meg is now under enormous pressure; she absolutely has to prevent the police officers from coming into the house so that the criminals don't do anything to Sarah who is trapped in the panic room; because Raoul threatened to kill Sarah via the loudspeaker system installed throughout the house.

Burnham manages to open the safe in the floor of the panic room and take the booty, a handful of very valuable securities. When the two criminals leave the panic room with Sarah, they find a dark house. Downstairs they are met by Stephen, seriously injured but armed with Raoul's pistol, who orders them to surrender Sarah. Burnham offers to release the girl for free, but Raoul hesitates. Meg can sneak up on him from behind and knock him down with a hammer while Burnham escapes with the prey. After a brutal brawl breaks out between Raoul and the Altmans, Burnham hears the noise and hesitantly decides to return to the house.

When Raoul is about to kill Meg, Burnham shoots his accomplice and tries to escape again. However, he is stopped by a SWAT team arriving at the same time , which had apparently been called by the two police officers who had been at the door. Meg, Sarah and the seriously injured Stephen are now finally safe.

Mother and daughter later go looking for a new house.

background

  • The panic room is not an invention of the scriptwriter. Such private bunkers are particularly common in the United States ; Such a room can also be found in the White House . The supposed increase in terrorist or criminal violence also increased the need for security.
  • Originally, the actress Nicole Kidman was intended for the role of Meg Altman , but she was injured during the shooting of the film Moulin Rouge and was therefore canceled. In the English-language original version, Kidman still had a very small speaking role: She lends the voice of Jodie Foster's film husband's new girlfriend on the phone.
  • A special feature for a Hollywood film: David Fincher shot Panic Room chronologically, which usually means additional financial expenditure in production.
  • Cinematographer Darius Khondji , with whom Fincher had worked at Sieben , was dismissed halfway through the shooting (clearly too expensive from the studio view) and replaced by Conrad W. Hall , the son of the well-known cinematographer Conrad L. Hall .
  • At a cost of $ 48 million, the film grossed $ 95.5 million in the United States.
  • In the fifth episode of the fifth season of the US television series Gilmore Girls , a panic room is shown and alludes to the 2002 film and the lead actress Jodie Foster.

criticism

"Tension cinema peppered with camera technology, which claims a complex mother-daughter relationship without providing any credible evidence. Although the film delivers solid genre cinema, compared to other productions by David Fincher, who only lets his idiosyncratic style will shine through here, it above all offers only routine craft. "

Awards

  • 2003: Nomination for the Saturn Award for Jodie Foster
  • 2003: ASCAP Award
  • Various individual awards

Web links

literature

  • Henry Keazor : Corps de songes / Corps de cauchemars? David Fincher's film 'Panic Room'. In: Salvatore Pisani, Elisabeth Oy-Marra (ed.): A house like me. Bielefeld 2014, pp. 267–287

Individual evidence

  1. Release certificate for Panic Room . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , July 2011 (PDF; test number: 90 235 V).
  2. ^ Panic Room. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 13, 2016 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used