Panic Room

A thinking-man's women-in-jeopardy picture, Panic Room does about as much as humanly possible with its deliberately restricted one-setting premise.

Never averse to glistening darkness, meaty metaphor or grandiloquent technical display, Fincher is also surprisingly at home with hokum.

Fincher mounts some clever, tense sequences in which the trio devises increasingly threatening strategies to force Meg and Sarah out of the panic room, only to be matched with improvised ingenuity from behind the vault door.

There's just no denying Fincher's gifts. Give the guy a camera or two or three, millions upon millions of dollars and state-of-the-art technologies, and there's no stopping him.

... one of the most ingenious and entertaining thrillers I've seen in quite a long time.

Foster nails the role, giving a tight, focused performance illuminated by shards of feeling.

How did Fincher - a director who is very good at supplying thrills to thrillers, whatever his other strengths or limitations might be - end up shepherding such a leaden film?

Extreme suspense, graphic violence; not for kids.

Valuing logic over brutality, David Fincher's claustrophobic ride also touted the real-world practicality of keeping quiet over the cinematic kicks of a loud thriller. It's like "Wait Until Dark" with helplessness that's emotional, not just physical.

Apart from one plot twist too many, "Panic Room" is a seamless suspense-thriller with a top-notch cast.

There are so little things you can do with this story and a lot of it is pretty contrived.

David Fincher directs a nail-biter starring Jodie Foster about a mother and daughter who defend their house against a brutal home invasion.