Panic Room (David Fincher, 2002)

 

It's quite a thing to see that Panic Room marks the big failure of David Fincher. After three memorably amazing films, Seven, The Game and Fight Club Fincher finally makes a bad movie. And the funny thing is that he doesn't fail because he tries a recipe that he doesn't know. No, he tries a pure thriller. A genre that he knows maybe too well. And the next funny thing is that Panic Room is doomed to failure even from the beginning. Such a boring story, such a static movie, such a tedious plot, would never go anywhere else, except to the bucket with the failing films. Panic Room is as simple as a guy chewing gum. A house, a woman and her daughter, a panic room and three burglars. And that's the end of the story. There is nothing to add to that film. And of course it is natural to think that nobody would even bother to make a movie that is so fucking minimal, that is so empty, telling a story that is so obvious and so cliché. But Fincher tried it and he failed miraculously. Panic Room is boring, uninteresting, banal, predictable and no matter the fact that we are talking about a thriller movie that the only thing that it supposed to have is suspense, the spectator doesn't feel not even a moment of pressure. The film runs and passes before his eyes like nothing is happening and the static and very few events that take place only add to the boredom of the film and to nothing else. Panic Room is a film that goes to the bucket with the movies by-the-numbers. If it wasn't Fincher's it would be one of the thrillers that came out and they were forgotten the next day. It's a movie without power, it's a movie without momentum. It's definitely from the movies that are not only bad, but they belong to the category with the films that you have very few things to say about it, because of its lack of true plot and interesting story. Panic Room is a screenplay horribly misfiring, beginning from a place where only failure can come after, telling a story that is totally uninteresting as it is terribly naïve.