Panic Room Essay


Panic room is a movie based on claustrophobia, this movie represents characters such as Jodie foster who plays the character of Meg Altman and her daughter Kirsten Stewart who plays her daughter Sarah.
The atmosphere of claustrophobia is created through cameras slowly cornering the cameras, the main theme of this film is a thriller & the film is based on the atmosphere of claustrophobia as the main character Meg Altman is claustrophobic & as burglars enter the home, she enters the panic room as a place of safety but makes a mistake.

The main characters for the movie are Meg Altman (Jodie foster) & her daughter Sarah (Kirsten Stewart) the panic room was in introduced by to us as both mother and daughter went house hunting after the divorce from Meg’s wealthy husband, from the first sighting of the panic room from Meg she had a weird vibe which was shown to us.
The director of the movie was David Fincher, who based the movies theme on claustrophobia.

The first main glimpse and introduction we got of Meg and Sarah was when the estate agent took them into the house, this was where we started finding out about their characters.

The main establishing shot, was when Meg went into the panic room for the very first time, this was probably the main shot in the whole film as we knew that she was claustrophobic, which gave it more of an edge, through this we knew what the basis of the film would be, mainly because of the purpose of the panic room was to be in safety if any danger would occur in the house.

One of the main indications of the storyline came from one of the first scenes, as Meg was viewing the master bedroom and saw that the room was small being the master bedroom & as soon as Meg heard the 2 words panic room, she seemed worried and very shocked, this scene was where it all started from and shows what the films basis will be.

The indication of the films genre comes from the movies title and in the in the first few scenes when you see Meg being introduced to the panic room and its functions, this shows that their isn’t a major problem with the panic room as Sarah was highly fond of the panic room, but as Meg is claustrophobic, it had a bigger impact on her.

The theme of Panic room was a mixture between scenes as when they was rushing around the house for example to get to the panic room it was very upbeat tempo & on the other hand when they are trying to break into the panic room it goes very low tempo with a very low echo sound, several different sounds where used to build different atmosphere. - 1 -

By Harim John