Panic Room

Coming off of Fight Club, a cultural zeitgeist that closed out the last century, David Fincher has delivered Panic Room, a self-proclaimed “popcorn” flick that has the same smarts, the same visual panache, the same violence as Fight Club, but none of the heart, the visceral pull. When intruders break into their new home, Mom (Foster) and daughter (Stewart) have just enough time to race into the panic room -- a steel-door-encased safety room left over from the paranoid previous tenant. Too bad that's the last place they want to hide: What the burglars want is in that room. Foster and Stewart are terrific, but Fincher is all business here, too wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am to be bothered with exposition or conclusion, too consumed with camera trickery to give us a basic -- and integral -- floor plan of the house.