Entertainment
Jodie Foster’s R-Rated Home Invasion Thriller Is A Masterclass Of Tension And Escalation
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Most subgenres fall into the same trap because certain beats and motifs have to be utilized. That’s what subgenres are. The pitfall that lesser films fall into is not knowing how to elevate a premise that’s inherently derivative, which is why there are so many dime-a-dozen psychological thrillers, slashers, and, in the case of 2002’s Panic Room, home invasion flicks.
But here’s the thing about David Fincher, the film’s director: he’s insanely good at taking a concept that seems boilerplate at face value and elevating it in a way that keeps it interesting. Panic Room, for all intents and purposes, is contrived. It’s stock by design. It’s a story about three guys breaking into a house where a woman and her pre-teen daughter live alone, and then fighting for survival with whatever limited resources they have at their disposal.
Panic Room Is Shot Like No Other Home Invasion Flick
If you’re a fan of thrillers, you probably lost count of how many home invasion flicks you’ve watched because they all start blending together. David Fincher knew this, so he flipped the entire subgenre on its head by going for a “cameraless” effect that allowed him to shoot impossibly long tracking shots that appear to happen in one unbroken take. His goal was to imply that “there’s no camera operator, no crew, and no track,” meaning the camera could go anywhere.
The result is a series of shots that start in the downstairs kitchen, work their way through cabinets, walls, and air ducts, push up winding flights of stairs, and, in some cases, float through the ceiling into the floor above. What’s most impressive is that, for a 2002 production, the computer-generated imagery never breaks the immersion. Like The Shining, it’s almost as if we’re seeing the entire story unfold from the house’s perspective, which allows the viewer to keep tabs on every character like a fly on the wall hopping from room to room undetected.
This shooting method is what makes Panic Room a cut above its contemporaries because no other home invasion film looks quite like this one. Coupled with David Koepp’s tight screenplay and the talent of its small cast, what would otherwise be a simple premise becomes a Hitchcockian nightmare that keeps you watching because it all feels so fresh.
A Yawn-Fest In Theory, A Masterclass In Practice
I’ll keep the synopsis brief here because Panic Room, like most home invasion plots, really doesn’t have much going on. How these things escalate is what really matters.
When Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) moves into a new NYC home with her 11-year-old daughter, Sarah (Kristen Stewart), they’re surprised to learn that the home’s previous owner, an eccentric millionaire, had an impenetrable panic room built in the master bedroom complete with closed-circuit televisions, a hard-wired telephone, and food rations. The day gets away from our protagonists, and Meg falls asleep before finishing the setup of some of the communications devices in the miniature bunker.
As luck would have it, three criminals, Junior (Jared Leto), Burnham (Forest Whitaker), and Raoul (Dwight Yoakam), have been casing the joint because the previous owner was Junior’s grandfather, and Junior has reason to believe millions of dollars are hidden inside the secret room.
They show up in the middle of the night while Meg and Sarah are sleeping, but Meg wakes up, realizes they’re being robbed, grabs Sarah, and retreats to the panic room so she can collect her thoughts and figure out her next move. The emergency phone line isn’t properly set up, but she can still communicate with the criminals through the intercom, and they refuse to leave until they get what they came for.
That’s the entire plot to Panic Room. Like I said, pretty standard stuff because if you’ve seen one home invasion movie, you’ve pretty much seen them all.
Why It’s A Cut Above
The movie really starts cooking when we get frantic shots from the house’s perspective, showing us where the criminals are wandering, what Meg and Sarah are seeing through the closed-circuit cameras, and creating a palpable amount of tension during the scenes that really matter, like when Meg realizes she dropped her cellphone near her bed before locking down and starts calculating whether she can run out, grab it, and make it back to safety.
It’s not just the “camera” work in Panic Room that seals the deal, however, because the criminals constantly getting into it with each other adds additional layers of tension to the mix. Jared Leto is perfect as the entitled loudmouth with a Napoleon complex because he genuinely believes he deserves his grandfather’s bearer bonds. He’s so unlikeable and shortsighted that he brings along Raoul to help with the job, something Burnham isn’t thrilled about from the jump.
So we have an unhinged, idiotic leader and an unpredictable bruiser willing to take extreme measures, including killing the family in the house, if he has to. That leaves Burnham, the only criminal with a conscience. The reason he’s valuable to Junior is because he installs safe rooms for a living and potentially knows how to crack them if he can properly size up the job. His reluctance to follow through makes the dynamic work because nobody was supposed to be in the house that night, and he genuinely feels terrible about how complicated things have become for Meg and Sarah.
In an ideal world, the robbery would have been a victimless crime. Three guys break into a home that nobody has moved into yet and steal money from a dead guy that nobody else knows exists. The alleged simplicity of the job compared to how the evening actually plays out makes the whole thing feel exponentially more disastrous because now Meg and Sarah are fearing for their lives, especially when the zero-hour trope gets added to the mix in the form of Sarah needing insulin to prevent her from falling into a diabetic coma.
Every single beat and setup in Panic Room is derivative. Every single escalation is expected. Every single trope is celebrated. But the movie never feels like a slog to get through. You go into this movie knowing exactly how it’s going to end, but it’s such a wild ride getting there that you simply do not care that you’ve seen so many different versions of this same story before.
If there’s one thing that took me out of the movie, it was how quickly Meg adapted to certain situations. Not because I don’t believe in the concept of a strong, independent woman or anything like that, but because your average person simply isn’t going to be this prepared for a home invasion, especially one that starts while they’re sleeping. There’s no way to practice for this kind of scenario, especially in a house you literally moved into earlier that day.
Still, if the only thing that really bothers me is the fact that somebody learned the floor plan to their own house faster than I ever reasonably could, I’d say Fincher and company did a hell of a job here.
Panic Room holds up nearly 25 years later for all of these reasons. It’s a run-of-the-mill story that feels completely original because of the creative choices behind its production. Jared Leto getting put in his place by his much bigger, much more intimidating henchman also put a smile on my face, because why wouldn’t it?
As of this writing, you can stream Panic Room on Hulu.
Entertainment
60+ of the best Memorial Day deals: We found TVs, mattresses, headphones, and more on sale
Table of Contents
The unofficial start to summer is almost here, but you don’t have to wait until Memorial Day itself on May 25 to find those Memorial Day deals.
There are already deals live at Amazon, where you’ll find savings of up to 40%. There are also plenty of savings from other online shopping destinations, with deals on products such as mattresses, TVs, furniture, and outdoor patio items. Plenty of brands are getting in on early MDW action — you can grab the Dyson Airwrap i.d. for $150 off and the Bose QuietComfort headphones for $120 off.
We’ll be updating all the best Memorial Day deals throughout the weekend, so be sure to keep checking back on this page for the biggest and best savings.
Best Memorial Day Amazon deals
$259
at Amazon
$349.99
Save $90.99
Why we like it
What says start of the summer better than slushies on demand? When Mashable’s Leah Stodart reviewed the Ninja Slushi, she pointed out the merits of the Slushi over a regular blender: no ice is required, and it keeps drinks frozen while in its cooling cylinder. From cola slushies to frosé, this might just be the ultimate summer drink machine. It has some downsides (sugar-free beverages are a no-go), but if you’re a frozen drink enthusiast, this deal is worth a closer look.
More Amazon deals
Best Memorial Day TV deals
$264.99
at Best Buy
$529.99
Save $265
Why we like it
Best Buy and Amazon have been racing to match prices on this Fire TV. Best Buy was initially $75 cheaper than Amazon, so Amazon dropped its sale price to keep pace. But that’s only a piece of the picture demonstrating just how good this deal is. Our resident TV expert, Leah Stodart, pointed out that this $264.99 price point is so good that it’s less than the sale price of the 43-inch version of Amazon’s most basic Ember 4K Fire TV. In other words, if you’re looking to score a solid deal on a smart TV this Memorial Day, this could be the one for you.
More TV deals
43-inch to 50-inch TVs
55-inch TVs
Mashable Deals
65-inch TVs
70-inch TVs and up
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Pioneer 70-inch 4K Roku TV — $319.99
$509.99(save $190) -
Insignia 75-inch QF QLED 4K TV — $399.99
$649.99(save $250) -
Hisense 75-inch E7 Mini-LED 4K TV — $749.99
$1,299(save $549.01) -
TCL 75-inch QM6K Mini-LED 4K TV — $899.99
$1,299.99(save $400) -
Hisense 85-inch U6 Mini‑LED 4K TV — $1,199.99
$1,999.99(save $800) -
TCL 85-inch QM6K Mini-LED 4K TV — $1,199.99
$1,999.99(save $800) -
LG 77-inch B5 OLED 4K TV — $1,499.99
$2,399.99(save $1,500) -
Sony Bravia 5 85-inch Mini-LED 4K TV — $1,798
$2,999.99(save $601.99)
Best Memorial Day mattress deals
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Avocado: Get up to 20% off organic mattresses, bed toppers, and bedding.
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Amerisleep: Get up to $1,000 off all mattresses and 40% off bundles
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Bear: Get 35% off sitewide, plus $275 worth of free accessories
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Casper: Get up to 30% off select mattresses and 35% off bundles
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Purple: Get up to $900 off a mattress and a base
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Helix: Get 25% off sitewide with code MEMDAY25
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Leesa: Get 30% off select mattresses
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Mattress Firm: Get up to 60% off select mattresses with queens starting at $189.99
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Nectar: Get up to 50% off select mattresses and 66% off bundles
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Saatva: Save up to $650 on mattresses, including the Saatva Classic and Memory Foam Hybrid mattresses
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Serta: Save up to $600 on select mattress and adjustable base sets
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Sleep Number: Save up to $1,200 on ClimateCool and ComfortNext mattresses, BOGO free Ultimate Shape Pillows, and BOGO 50% off sheets
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Tempur-Pedic: Save 40% on the Tempur-Cloud Mattress or up to $500 on adjustable mattress sets, plus free gifts
Best Memorial Day home deals
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Brooklinen: Refresh your bedding for summer with 25% off sitewide
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Buffy: Save up to 25% sitewide
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Caraway Home: Save up to 30% on cookware and bakeware
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Cozy Earth: Save 20% sitewide or 25% when you buy three or more items
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Crate & Barrel: Save up to 60% on rugs, 35% on kitchen brands, and 30% on furniture
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Cuisinart: Save 15% on $99.95+, 20% on $149.95+, and 25% on $249.95+
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Home Depot: Save up to 40% on select appliances, 20% on select patio furniture, and up to $175 off on select tools now through May 27
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Joybird: Take up to 45% off on bestselling furniture and up to 35% off sitewide through May 25
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Kohl’s: Save up to 50% sitewide on clothes, kitchen appliances, bedding, patio furniture, and more
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Lovesac: Save 40% sitewide through May 31
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Lowe’s: Save on appliances, grills, patio furniture, gardening supplies, and more through June 3
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Mellow Sleep: Get $20 off $100, $50 off $200, or $100 off $300
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Nest New York: Save 25% sitewide with code 25OFF
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Parachute: Save 25% sitewide plus 30% on bundles
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Ruggable: Save up to 25% sitewide
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Rugs Direct: Save up to 80% sitewide on brands like Safavieh, Chris Loves Julia, Loloi, Rifle Paper Co., and Rugs USA
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SharkNinja: Save up to 30% on Ninja kitchen appliances and Shark vacuums, hair tools, and fans
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Target: Target’s Hello Summer Sale brings deals on summer favorites, including up to 20% off kids’ outdoor toys and up to 45% off patio furniture and garden essentials
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Wayfair: Save up to 70% sitewide
Best Memorial Day tech deals
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Best Buy: Save on TVs, Apple products, laptops, monitors, Sony cameras, Bluetooth speakers, and more
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BJ’s Wholesale Club: Get up to 50% off TVs and electronics, 25% off mattresses, and 15% off home and kitchen
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HP: Save up to 72% on OmniBook laptops, Omen gaming PCs, All-in-One desktops, and more
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Lenovo: Save up to 30% on ThinkPad, Yoga, ThinkBook, IdeaPad, and Legion laptops
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LG: Save up to 44% on TVs, 40% on monitors, and up to 58% on appliances
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Tile: Save up to 40% on trackers
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TP-Link: Save up to $220 on select products, including the Tapo C460 (4-Pack) + H500, plus get an additional 10% off sitewide with code USA10
Best Memorial Day beauty deals
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Dyson: Save up to $150 on the Dyson Airwrap i.d., Airstrait, and Supersonic Nural
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FabFitFun: Save 40% on your first box, plus get a free Vacation bonus box ($250 value) with an annual membership signup
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L’ange: Save up to 44% on select tools with code MEMORIAL, plus an extra 15% off your entire order with code EXTRA15
Best Memorial Day outdoor deals
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Bote: Save 15% sitewide
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Columbia: Save up to 40% on “almost everything”
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Dick’s Sporting Goods: Save up to 50% on bikes, kayaks, tents, grills, and golf gear, save up to to 40% on Nike and adidas
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Huffy: Save 25% on select bikes
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HOVERAir: Save up to 47%
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Rumpl: Save 25% sitewide
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Solo Stove: Save 15% on select fire pits and pizza ovens
Entertainment
Obsession Needed Only Two Weeks To Make Movie History
By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Memorial Day weekend is a showdown between the two sides of modern Hollywood. On one side, we have Disney’s big-budget Star Wars blockbuster The Mandalorian and Grogu, and on the other, the latest micro-budget horror from Blumhouse: Obsession. The two films can’t be any more different, and while Star Wars’ return to the big screen is expected to earn over $400 million at the box office, it’s Obsession that’s going to enter the history books. Not only because of its total box office, it’s going to end up over a $100 million, but it’s how it’s earned the money. It’s the first film since Shrek to earn more its second weekend than its first, without the benefit of Christmas or Thanksgiving weekends. That’s one for the history books.
Obsession Defies Decades Of History
A second weekend drop of under 50 percent is considered a success in Hollywood. On average, movies tend to be frontloaded these days, and we’ll never again have a film like Titanic, which earned more on Valentine’s Day three months after release than it did on opening night. It was catastrophic that both Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania fell by 67 percent in their second weekends, but a franchise-saving success when Bumblebee dropped only 3 percent. Obsession has, percentage-wise, done better than all of those films, and thousands of others.
Obsession is, as of the time of this writing, on pace for a second weekend performance of $19 million. 16 percent above its original haul of $17 million. With outstanding word of mouth, rave reviews, and countless social media reactions, sketch comedian Curry Barker’s (no relation to that other Barker) horror debut shows no signs of slowing down. If the third weekend breaks $19 million, Obsession will become one of the most successful films in modern history.
The Next Big Name In Horror
With a total budget of under a million dollars, Obsession cost less than the catering budget for The Mandalorian and Grogu. The tight story, with a total runtime of barely over 100 minutes, has been able to capture the audience’s imagination in a way few horror films have before, already earning the film comparisons to The Ring, The Blair Witch Project, and Paranormal Activity. The One Wish Willow that allows Bear (Michael Johnston) to wish for his crush, Nikki (Inde Navarrette) to love him more than anyone is already being talked about as the subject of a second film, or an anthology, with multiple One Wish Willow’s going very, very badly for the wisher.
Low-budget horror has become a staple of cinema over the last few decades in particular, and Curry Barker is set to follow up his current hit next year with Anything but Ghosts starring Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard (with an estimated budget of $5 million) and in 2027, a new take on an old classic: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’ll be a tough bar to clear the success of Obsession, which might break even more records before its run comes to an end, but given the reaction to his small-scale Monkey’s Paw story, Barker is going to become one of the hottest directors in Hollywood.
Entertainment
Grogu Movie Proves Disney Learned The Wrong Lesson From The Star Wars Sequels
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Right now, The Mandalorian and Grogu is in theaters, and I can’t help but think director Jon Favreau and writer Dave Filoni are both doing their best Han Solo impersonations right now: “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” The movie is projected to earn less money than any live-action Star Wars film before it, a record previously held by the much-maligned Solo: A Star Wars Story. Plus, the movie is currently at a 63 percent on Rotten Tomatoes (perilously close to “rotten” territory). Finally, some critics have dubbed this the new worst Star Wars movie, surpassing the worst that the Sequel Trilogy had to offer.
This is morbidly ironic because this was the safest Star Wars movie Disney could have made. It’s an adaptation of The Mandalorian, the franchise’s only breakout streaming hit, and it stars Pedro Pascal, Hollywood’s current golden boy. How did things go so far off the rails for the first Star Wars movie in seven years? The answer is so simple that you can see it even with your blast shield down: Disney learned all the wrong lessons from the failure of the Sequel Trilogy. Because of this, the movie they made to save the franchise may ultimately doom Star Wars altogether.
Jet Fett Radio
The failure of The Mandalorian and Grogu begins with the Star Wars sequels. The Force Awakens was a crowd-pleaser, but it’s an open secret that this film played it safe. It was a soft reboot of A New Hope that threw in plenty of familiar characters and franchise tropes. The Last Jedi tried to break out of the remake mold altogether, with Rian Johnson delivering a sequel filled with shocks and surprises (there’s not even a lightsaber duel!). The backlash among fans was immediate, and dislike of The Last Jedi is considered a major factor in why Solo: A Star Wars Story did so poorly at the box office.
In response, returning director JJ Abrams tried to fill The Rise of Skywalker with as much fan service as possible. He inexplicably brought Emperor Palpatine back with no explanation of how he survived, and Abrams even brought Han Solo back through equally unexplained means. Fan-favorite characters like Lando Calrissian were pushed to the forefront while controversial characters (mostly, Rose Tico) were almost entirely pushed out. TROS even sloppily recreates the ending of Return of the Jedi, all while frantically trying to undo multiple plot points from The Last Jedi. None of this worked, of course, and The Rise of Skywalker was deemed the worst Star Wars movie ever made.
This Isn’t The Way
Now, The Mandalorian and Grogu may be taking that title, and The Rise of Skywalker is partially to blame. You see, when fans expressed their dislike of The Last Jedi, Disney glommed onto the frequent complaint that “it doesn’t feel like Star Wars.” That’s why TROS is chock full of sloppy fan service: they wanted to give fans something familiar at every turn. But this came at the expense of the story, which is how The Rise of Skywalker came to be hated even more than The Last Jedi. As it turns out, giving fans a bunch of member berries moments doesn’t make up for nonsensical plotting and characterization.
Incredibly, though, Disney execs doubled down: instead of learning from their failures with TROS, they decided the only way for The Mandalorian and Grogu to succeed was if every single frame of the film was overflowing with lazy nostalgia. Villains have no depth or definition: they are all just faceless bad guys for the film’s titular duo to dispatch, video game style. We careen from one familiar Star Wars element to another (Hutts, Stormtroopers, and X-Wings, oh my!) in a plot that goes absolutely nowhere. That’s because you’re not supposed to care about the story: you’re supposed to enjoy watching the director take out your favorite action figures and do all the playing for you.
A Gunshy Studio, A Dying Franchise
The Mandalorian and Grogu is a failure on many levels: the plot is terrible, the pacing is uneven, the characterization is nonexistent, and so on. But I think the film’s biggest problem is that Disney has lost the nerve to take any creative chances. Basically, fan response to The Last Jedi made the company permanently gunshy, and they no longer have the nerve to give us anything risky on the big screen. That’s fine if all you want out of this franchise is pure spectacle, and the latest movie delivers all the pew-pew you can pack into two hours. However, the sad truth is that Star Wars will never surprise you, ever again.
As a lifelong fan, I genuinely hate to see it. I’m one of the rare nerds who thought The Last Jedi was the best of the sequels, specifically because it took risks and tried to give us something new. That’s the real strength of the prequels, too: as stupid as they got, Lucas was always exploring new ways to tell stories in a galaxy far, far away. Now, in the Disney era, the franchise has lost the ability to innovate altogether and can only offer a buffet of the oldest and moldiest Star Wars tropes. Is it any wonder, then, that even the hungriest fans are starting to lose their appetite?
After brief stay in U.S., Tiger Woods jets back to Switzerland
Mets' Juan Soto (illness) scratched from lineup vs. Marlins
