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Review

In Panic Room, director Fincher's stylish, intense thriller, the terror of home intrusion and one family's fight for survival isn't as fully realized as it could have been, but what's on the screen will surely get the adrenaline racing. Foster plays a well-to-do, recently divorced mother who moves into a new Manhattan townhouse with her teenage daughter. What should be the start of a joyous new life quickly dissipates when a group of thieves - thinking the house is empty - break in to steal a fortune hidden in the "panic room," an enclosed room that is secure from the outside. It is also where mother and daughter find themselves trapped when their menacing visitors make themselves known.

Screenwriter David Koepp, who wrote Jurassic Park, knows a thing or two about creating suspense, and has done so in straight-forward and credible fashion. That two main characters spend most of the film locked in a room is more of a challenge and less a gimmick to Koepp, and he maintains suspense but not at the cost of characterization. Director Fincher, given limited breathing room here, gives his camera a life of its own as he finds new and often ingenious ways to move from one room to another.