Panic Room Critic Reviews

An old-house thriller retrofitted for the 21st century without any touch of unneeded flash, Panic Room is scary enough to do for downtown living what Jaws did for beaches.Read the full review

Ingeniously scary.Read the full review

Fincher eschews quick cuts in favor of long, leisurely ones. He knows what he's doing, and the proof is in the result. The suspense in Panic Room never ebbs, and that makes for a thoroughly entertaining -- if somewhat exhausting -- 108 minutes.Read the full review

Panic Room is Fincher's high-style testament to the cool things movies can do to make us jump out of our seats in the dark.Read the full review

Smartly plotted, convincingly acted and brilliantly executed technically, this engrossing thriller adds some clever modern wrinkles to the time-tested formula of sinister intruders threatening innocents in their home.Read the full review

The movie, which suggests a combination of "Wait Until Dark" and "Rear Window," not only takes your breath away on an aesthetic level, it eloquently evokes the mother's and daughter's vulnerability.Read the full review

The movie resembles a chess game; the board and all of the pieces are in full view, both sides know the rules, and the winner will simply be the better strategist.Read the full review

Jodie Foster stars, and it's a pleasure, for once, to see her in something entertaining and mindless.Read the full review

An above-average thriller.Read the full review