Fincher Countdown Part 4 - Panic Room

Hello everyone and welcome to Some Like It Scott's latest limited series: the Fincher Countdown. Each week in the lead up to David Fincher's latest film, Mank, the two Scotts and countdown special guest, Jay Habib, will be working their way through most* of David Fincher's filmography in chronological order, starting from his non-franchise debut, the neo-noir psychological detective thriller, SEVEN, leading all the way to 2014's GONE GIRL. Join us each week as we talk about a different Fincher film!

 

On Part 4 of the countdown, Scott, Scott, and Jay take a look back at what at least one Scott labels as David Fincher's most underrated film: the home invasion thriller starring Jodie Foster, PANIC ROOM. PANIC ROOM follows the lives of a recently separated mother, Meg (Foster), and her daughter, Sarah (Kristen Stewart), on the first evening in their newly purchased Upper West Side brownstone in Manhattan, when their new home is invaded by a trio of burglars, intent on finding millions of dollars in the floor safe of the luxurious apartment's panic room. The catch? Meg and Sarah are able to securely lock themselves in their new home's panic room, unknowingly with the floor safe, before the intruders are able to wrangle them. Unfortunately, the panic room's hardline phone had not yet been connected, and so the mother-daughter pair have no way of alerting the outside world to their dire situation. Forced to survive the night, as the intruders become progressively more agitated and inventive in trying to force them out, Meg and Sarah are forced to make some hard decisions, as their burglar counterparts have to deal with rising tensions of their own to avoid the theft falling apart. The countdown trio give their thoughts on Foster's and the supporting cast's performances, the film's success as a purely genre exercise, and whether this put Fincher back on track after two relative box office failures.