PANIC ROOM — SHOCKTOBER!

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A Tight Spot
Fincher's Latest Hits the Mark
By Cole Smithey

Director David Fincher's "Panic Room" opens with a sumptuous credit sequence so captivating that you're drawn into the movie before a single word is spoken. Fincher, like Hitchcock and Polanski, understands implicitly the importance of every split second of film to register a particular condition in an audience's communal mind. Giant white marquee lettering suspends at odd angles over various live action Manhattan locations to the sound of a clock softly ticking. There's retro ambiance that drips with majestic Neo-Gothic portent and shrewdly references movies like "Rear Window" and "Wait Until Dark." The film that follows lives up to every bit of suspense and tension that those classic movies still induce today.

David Fincher ("Seven") is an audacious filmmaker interested in the pure physicality of emotion and movement to bare witness to hidden mysteries. No other living director goes as far in assessing the molecules of energy at the core of the stories he directs. Fincher's  previous film "Fight Club" polarized audiences. "Fight Club," like Paul Verhoeven's "Starship Troopers" or Mary Heron's "American Psycho," is a film you either adore or condemn for its deeply rooted violence and dark social commentary.

With "Panic Room," Fincher should have more luck converting audiences to his side because of the minimalism of the story and the extensive degree he goes to in expressing fear from inside the claustrophobic confines of a "safe" place. "Panic Room" (written by David Koepp, "Stir of Echoes") is a terror/suspense movie that takes you to the edge of your seat and pins you there with a tug of war between immaculate photography and a tension filled plot. As a battle of wits escalates between a mother with her teenage daughter and a trio of home intruders, we savor a best and worst case scenario of an unpredictably precarious kind.

Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) is a recently divorced wife of a wealthy pharmaceutical giant who moves, with her teenaged daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart), into a spacious upper west side "townstone" previously owned by a paranoid millionaire. The home's master bedroom is equipped with a high-tech steel-reinforced panic room in the event of intrusion or outside attack. With its own separat phone line, ventilation system, toilet, supplies, and bank of home surveillance monitors, the room also contains, unbeknownst to Meg or Sarah, a safe containing millions of dollars.

One of the men who constructed the safe room (Burnham, played by Forest Whitaker) has conspired with Junior (Jared Leto), a former caregiver of the previous owner, to break into the safe while the house is vacant. Junior has covered his bases and elicited the help of another more experienced thief named Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) to assist in the robbery--complete with ski-mask, rubber gloves, and a silenced automatic pistol. Once the thieves realize that they are not alone, Meg awakens barely in time to rescue Sarah, and the panic room becomes an urgent refuge that sits as the very target that the thieves will do anything to break into.

The movie percolates in jolts and sustained dread over a brilliantly ominous score by Howard Shore ("The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring"). Filmed almost entirely inside the eerie dark of a house barely lit by moon glow, Shore's noninvasive music chides, confirms, and punctuates the drama that unfolds as the thieves bicker and attempt various ploys to lure Meg out or to invade the room.

Apart from one plot twist too many, "Panic Room" is a seamless suspense-thriller with a top-notch cast. Jodie Foster was past due for another foray into the suspense genre and brings a genuine maternal warmth to the role of a mother fighting with her every nerve and sinew to defend her family.

Rated R. 108 mins.

DISORDER — CANNES 2015

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Both of its opaque titles (“Maryland” for its Cannes’ Un Certain Regard premiere) describe the muddy nature of this unsatisfying thriller. Mathias Schoenaerts and Diane Kruger elevate its by-committee script, if only by a few degrees.

Co-writer/director Alice Winocour goes for a neo-noir style that falls flat. Visually, this movie is a snooze. It develops an optical-drone effect due to a drab and dark lighting design that saps all energy. The B-movie narrative at play lacks enough substance to counter balance this lopsided movie. 

Vincent (Schoenaerts) is a former French Special Forces soldier turned bodyguard to protect Jessie (Diane Kruger) and her son Ali (Zaid Errougui-Demonsant) while her Lebanese arms-dealing husband Whalid (Percy Kemp) is away on business. File this title under Eurotrash cinema.

The predictably stoic Vincent suffers constantly from symptoms of PTSD. Still, he’s easily able to turn up the heat when sudden danger appears, as it does frequently. There’s no shortage of sexy onscreen chemistry between Kruger and Schoenaerts, but it doesn’t go far enough for a film that a director such as William Friedkin, Paul Verhoeven, or David Fincher would have ramped up considerably. A script re-write would be the first step.

Winocour eventually pulls out all the stops in a stylized knock-down-drag-out-orgy-of- violence that leaves the audience feeling cold. There isn’t much to like about a movie whose raison d’etre is gratuitous violence. "Disorder" flopped in Cannes, and now it will flop at the box office. 

Not Rated. 98 mins.

THE GIFT

   Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

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Triple-threat (writer, director, and actor) Joel Edgerton delivers a tight no-frills suspense thriller that comes complete with a noteworthy twist ending that will have audiences buzzing.

Featuring an exquisite cast that includes Allison Tolman (of television’s “Fargo” fame), the back-loaded narrative finds everyman Simon (Jason Bateman) moving into an architecturally pleasing house with his wife Robyn (Rebecca Hall).

That their vista-complete home sits mere miles away from where Simon grew up proves to be more a stumbling block for the couple’s plans of having a baby and living a normal life. Gordo (played by Edgerton) went to middle school with Simon, but his memories of their juvenile days together aren’t so fond.

A chance meeting in a housewares store puts the socially awkward Gordo in touch with Simon and Robyn. They take down Gordo’s number, but the polite interaction gives “Gordo-the-weirdo” cause to drop off a doorstep gift that leads to a series of unsolicited presents and unannounced visits. Gordo gets in the habit of stopping by to hang out with Robyn during the day when Simon is away at his well-paid day job.

Edgerton flips audience expectations as the creepy Gordo’s reasons for being the messed up individual he is become painfully clear. Aside from a few gratuitously heavy-handed shocks, “The Gift” is an original thriller tied up with a thematic bow about how everyone reaps what he or she sows.

Karma is everywhere you look.

Rated R. 108 mins.