People are voting emotionally.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Sometimes it's easier to enjoy a movie if you start with relatively low expectations. Panic Room is directed by David Fincher (Seven and Fight Club) and stars two great actors who are capable directors in their own right (Jodie Foster and Forrest Whittaker). Because of this my expectations were fairly high, perhaps unreasonably so.Jodie Foster plays a wealthy divorcee with a teenage daughter. As they are looking at a house they are considering buying in New York, they discover that the house has a unique feature-a hidden room surrounded in concrete and steel. The room comes complete with sophisticated surveillance equipment, a direct phone line and a variety of supplies designed to facilitate survival in the case of a siege.What they don't know is that the house has another secret, a hidden treasure worth millions of bonds. The person who does know this enlists the aid of two henchmen to help him find the hidden treasure. They think they are entering a vacant house. When they discover otherwise, the complications unfold-enter the panic room.One of the henchmen (Forrest Whittaker) has spent the last 12 years installing safe rooms for wealthy people. He knows the ins and outs, and he knows that the treasure they want is locked in the panic room with the two rightful inhabitants of the house.This is an intriguing premise with some interesting symbolism. The safe room that keeps the bad guys out soon becomes a prison that keeps the good guys in. A similar premise was developed in the film The Last Castle when Robert Redford compares castles and prisons. Same basic design, it's just that one is designed to keep people out, the other designed to keep people in.The film has some excellent cinematography and some great editing. Jodie Foster and Forrest Whittaker turn in great performances as would be expected. Kristen Stewart does an excellent job as the teenage daughter. The other characters are, unfortunately, cartoon cutouts. So much so that at points the film looks a bit too much like Home Alone.Don't get me wrong. The film is suspenseful and has some outstanding elements. Jodie Foster continues to be one of the top actors working today and her performance here is compelling. In spite of the aforementioned flaws, the film really is worth a look-especially if I have helped lower your expectations.

This movie Panic Room about a single mom and her diabetic daughter's fight to get through a night of terror is amazing! After buying a house in New York following a hard divorce they are greeted on their first night in the house with 3 burglars who know something about their house that they don't. This movie was fast paced and kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. Highly recommend it for any audience that enjoys action!

Beautifully Directed movie by David Fincher. Very natural and flawless acting by Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart. Loved the thugs who enter the house too. especially Forest and Jared Leto. Overall a very entertaining and suspenseful movie until the end and hooks you right from the beginning and maintains it until the end.

Since the vast majority of the "reviews" I've seen on the site for this fast paced, fantastically acted, tense, intelligent thriller from one of the greatest living directors today are lists of things they think make them more intelligent than the writers, I'll retort in kind. Skip to the final paragraph to avoid the following spoiler-based refutations:1. Why did she get such a big house?: She's a rich, recent divorcé with a kid who wanted a backyard in New York City and she could afford it.2. Why didn't she hear them whispering three floors down through several doors and walls?: Sort of speaks for itself, doesn't it, very quietly? 3. Why didn't they just leave them in the elevator?: Because they didn't make the decision, she did because she felt the impenetrable panic room was safer. 4. How did they get the gas in the vents when it had its own ventilation system?: Because the guy who designed them knew how to get into it, its separate from the main vents but he knew the precise location at which he could break through the dry wall and drill into the simple polyurethane vent, not steal or cement. 5. Why didn't the fire blow up the propane tank?: Because the propane was being filtered into the vent secured to the wall with tape, the heat melted the tape and the air pressure blew the hose away from the wall and the further from the wall the faster the gas dissipated, that's why only the guy right next to the wall got burned. 6. Why didn't the designer know about the intercom?: He didn't say he didn't know, he just told the one character that you couldn't just talk back to the camera with no audio functionality, you have to push the wall-mounted intercom button that was behind the bed cushion he flipped over first. 7. Why would Forest Whitaker go back to help the family?: Because he didn't know the psycho, didn't plan for violence at all and had a wife and kid of his own whom they likely reminded him of as you can see by his constant defense of them from violence imposed by Raul. He just planned to walk in, open the panic room door and crack the safe. 8. Why let the bonds fly in the wind at the end?: They weren't properly secured in his jacket so he was still clutching them with his hands up until the police told him to open his palm so they could check for weapons. 9. Why was the climax so anti-climactic?: Because it wasn't a big dumb summer blockbuster, not everything has to end with a huge explosion, they get back to business as usual and try to get on with their lives, happily ever after.While this isn't admittedly Fincher's best, it bares his signature, style, detail, passion and quality, most directors are content to throw in a jump scare when the mirror closes, Fincher goes out of his way to make even the most mundane of plots smart, exciting and entertaining. It's not a perfect film or a piece of high art, but it's an 8/10 from me.