Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Panic Room

(2002)

Jodie Foster made a series of pretty damn good thrillers starting with this one, and going on to Flightplan, Inside Man, and The Brave One (really more of a Death Wish vigilante/revenge flick).

A panic room is a place within a house or apartment where the residents can retreat in the event that drug-crazed Negroes or rioting antifas or aliens from Jupiter or angry trick-or-treaters invade your home. They have become all the rage among people who can afford them. At minimum they should be reinforced on all six sides by concrete or steel or kryptonite, and have a separate phone line. One expects to be in there for only a short time, while the police are on their way.

Jodie and Kristin Stewart, in her first co-starring role, before she became a hot property because of those pretty awful Twilight films, as her diabetic daughter, have just moved in. They know about the panic room, but not about the contents of the safe inside it, containing millions in bearer bonds. But Jared Leto, the scumbag grandson of the previous owner, knows, and he recruits psycho killer Dwight Yoakum and Forest Whitaker, who built the room, to break in and get them. But they don’t expect Jodie and Kristin to be there. It develops into a game of cat and mouse, since the phone hasn’t been connected yet, with Jodie defeating everything they try … for a while. But when the daughter starts to go into a diabetic coma, the odds change. I thought this was really swell, until the end, which was a disappointment. Not bad enough to ruin the whole thing, but not really believable. It’s still worth watching.