Director David Fincher had built up
quite a career for himself in the
commercial and music video round through
his involvement with propaganda films.
After the breakout success of seven,
Fincher was able to apply this newfound
clout towards a producing partnership
with propaganda for his third feature 
a suspenseful puzzle thriller in the vein
of Alfred Hitchcock called The Game. 
The game's origins are
interesting in and of itself with
Fincher actually being asked to
direct the script by John Brancato and
Michael Ferris with the initial intent
of it being his return to features after
the abysmal experience on alien 3. The
sudden availability of seven star Brad
Pitt forced the production of that film
to go first. And delayed The Game by
several years. Ultimately this proved to
be a good thing as sevens runaway
success, set The Game up for similar
success. With a built-in audience already
hungry for the visionary directors next work.
Michael Douglus excels at playing cold lizard like
Scrooge archetypes and his performance
here as wealthy investment banker
Nicholas van Orton feels like a subdued
less flamboyant version of Wall Street's
Gordon Gekko. Fincher has often been
compared to Stanley Kubrick as the
Masters heir apparent an idea that's
paralleled by the casting of Douglas
who in father Kirk headlined Kubrick's early work.
 
As the cold cynical waitress christine
Deborah Kara unger is a great foil to
Douglass's character as well as an
inspired female part that resists
becoming a conventional love interest trope.
Her ability to mask her feelings and
intensions is crucial to the success of
The Game leaving Douglas and the
audience constantly trying to figure out
where her loyalties lie.
Sean Penn's role is
Nicholas's younger brother Conrad is
smaller than his usual performances but
no less memorable as a disheveled
mischievous agent of chaos.
character actor James Rebhorn 
may have never held a spotlight in his own right,
but every one of his performances was
never anything less than solid as can be
seen his performance as the disorganized
CRS executive Jim Feingold.
Reports talents get a chance to truly
shine on the game becoming the human
face of the ominous CRS entity and by
extension the film's de facto antagonist
Fincher also throws in some small cameos
in the form of fellow propaganda
director Spike Jones as a medic towards
the conclusion and Sevens Mark Boone jr.
as a private investigator tailing Nick
The Game is also Fincher's first
collaboration with a late great
cinematographer Harris Savides in the
future world. They had previously shot 
a number of commercials together. 
The anamorphic 35 millimeter film frame is
awash in steely blues and teals
accentuated by high contrast lighting
that signifies Fincher's signature touch
flashback sequences filmed on 8
millimeter provide a dreamlike nostalgia
that appropriately dances along the
lines of sentimentality and melancholy
Savides is well suited to translate
Fincher's vision to screen. Ably creating
a push and pull dichotomy between the
sophisticated polish of nick's old money
world, the slick modern CRS offices, 
and the seedy grunge of the back alleyways
and slums that Nick's game takes them to
the film is essentially about Nicks
loss of control which juxtaposes his
confused flailing against deliberate
observational compositions and precise
dolly movements as a way to echo CRSs
forceful hunting of Nick along a
predetermined path. This visual precision
is highly reminiscent of Kubrick's work.
And may very well be what it would have
looked like had Kubrick ever decided to
make an Alfred Hitchcock style thriller.
Yet another cubic reference can be seen
in the video slideshow that Nick watches
as part of his initial evaluation which
in and of itself highly resembles its
infamous counterpart in a Clockwork Orange.
Sevens Howard Shore returns to create
the score for the game crafting an
intriguing brassy sound to reflect the
propulsive mystery peppering it with
melancholy piano chords that hint at Nick's
inability to move past his father's death.
Fincher's stellar ear for needle drops
also results in the incorporation of
Jefferson airplane's White Rabbit as a
psychedelic taunting mechanism in the
scene where Nick arrives at his mansion
to find it has been vandalized with
blacklight graffiti. All these elements
are tied together by [?] sound
design into an evocative sonic landscape
that drops us further into a puzzle.
Fincher's music video work often explored
the boundaries of the film frame
transgressing arbitrary lines to see
what was being hidden from view. Most of the
time this meant that the artifice of
the production process was made known 
to the viewer. The game is an appropriate
Avenue to explore this idea in feature
form because the story concerns itself
with what happens when Nick is
essentially placed inside of his own movie.
Any close inspection of a given object or event reveals its inherent
fakery while alluding to some aspect of the
 filmmaking process.
Christine's apartment is revealed as a
fake set via various set dressing
techniques Nick stumbles upon. The hail
of gunfire directed at Nick and
Christine by masked gunmen is comprised of 
harmless blanks. 
Nick's iconic plunge from the top of a San Francisco
skyscraper is cushioned by a giant stunt airbag.
The Game Nick has been thrust into is an elaborate deliberate
manipulation of actors and events
designed to take him on a film like
character arc of transformation. 
To this effect architecture and other 
adventures thematic fascinations plays a huge role
in the proceedings. Fincher's locations
and sets are always architecturally
impressive and The Game doesn't
disappoint. Whether it's the classical
style scene in Nick's mansion and San
Francisco's financial district or the
sleek modernity of CRS' futuristic offices.
Fincher often frames his subjects from a low angle in order to
show the ceilings this accomplishes the
dual effect of establishing the realism
of the space as well as conveying a
subtle sense of claustrophobia. 
A sensation very important to the game's
tension. Production designer Jeffrey B Croft,
makes great use of lines as a way
to direct your eye especially in the crs
headquarters set these lines subtly
point Nick and by extension us in the
right direction to go despite the
orchestrated chaos around him. 
Fincher is able to find several instances within
the story to indulge in other
fascinations the game uses technology
 striking ends and
advancing the plot like the television
magically talking to Nick in his own
home
or the hidden video camera lodged inside
the clown mannequins eye. 
a distinct punk aesthetic runs the Fincher's filmography.
Witht the most obvious examples being
found in Fight Club and The Girl 
with the Dragon Tattoo but even in the
Scrooge turned good tale such as The
Game
Fincher is able to incorporate elements of 
punk culture in a natural way like
the aforementioned blacklight graffiti sequence.
Finally Fincher's approach to the stories informed by a nihilistic
Sensibility besides Nick just being an
inherently cynical selfish person
the haunting specter of suicide plays a
prominent part in the story as as the
ultimate revelation that the film's
events are actually orchestrated
manipulations and inherently false. 
The Game was a modest hit upon its release
bolstered by a compelling story,
a superb technical presentation and
strong performances that show off how
much Fincher had grown as a director
since seven only two years earlier. 
For a while the film fell into mild obscurity
under the deluge of other late 90s
thrillers, but it seems to have recently
undergone a cultural reappraisal as a
work that not only cemented Fincher's
reputation as a great director with 
a hard edge in commercial appeal but one
that also demands to stand side by side
with his very best work. 
Coming off the modest success of The Game Fincher was
in the process of looking for 
a follow-up project when he was sent Fight
Club a novel by the groundbreaking
author Chuck Palahniuk a self-vowed non reader,
Fincher nonetheless embraced
the novel and by the time he had put the
book down he knew it was going to be his
next project there was just one problem,
The book had already been optioned and
was in development with 20th Century Fox
whose incessant meddling and subterfuge
during the production of Alien 3 made
for a miserable shooting experience
ultimately ruined the film and nearly
caused Fincher to swear off feature
filmmaking forever. This time however he
would be ready he was now a director in
high demand and he used this clout to
successfully pitch his vision of Fight
Club to Laura Ziskin and the other
executives at Fox. The studio was eager
to mend relations with the maverick
director so they allowed him a huge
amount of leeway and realizing his vision.
Armed with the luxury of not
having to bend to the whims of nervous
studio executives Fincher was able to
fashion a pitch
black comedy about masculinity in crisis
and the battle between modern
commercialism and our primal animalistic nature's 
Edward Norton brings a
drawl dry sense of humor to his
performance as the narrator 
an insomniac office drone, obsessed with
Swedish furniture and support groups for
serious terminal diseases that he
doesn't even have. In what is one of his
most memorable roles Norton Abele
projects the perverse profoundly morbid
thoughts of his character with sardonic
wit and a sickly physicality. 
 This frail scrawny performance is
all the more remarkable considering
Norton had just come off the production
of Tony Kay's American History X where
he had built up a considerable amount of
muscle for his role as a violent white supremacist.
 
In his second
collaboration with Fincher after the
successful team up in seven Brad Pitt
also turns in a career highlight
performance as Tyler Durden a soap
salesman and anarchist with a weaponized
masculinity and radical seductive
worldview that he preaches for at
every opportunity.
Durbun's name and persona have entered
our pop-culture lexicon as the
personification of the unleashed
masculine did as well as the grungy
counter commercial mentalities that defined the 1990s.
Helena Bonham Carter counters the overbearing
masculinity of Fincher's vision while
oddly complementing it as Marla singer
the very definition of a hot mess.
Marla is a cold cynical woman dressed up
in black goth affectations.
 Her aggressive feminine presence is an
appropriate counterbalance of Tyler
Durden roaring machismo serving the
highlight the film's homoerotic
undertones 
Meatloaf a popular musician in his own right
plays Bob a huge blubbering mess was
self-described bitch tits and a cuddly
demeanor while Jared Leto bleaches his
hair to the point of anonymity in his
role as a prominent acolyte of Durin's
to achieve fight clubs oppressively grungy look,
Fincher enlist the eye
cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth with son of
legendary DP Jordan Cronenweth with who it
briefly shot alien 3 for the director.
the younger Cronenweth would go on to
lend several Fincher's later works due
to the strength of their first
collaboration here the film is shot on
super 35 millimeter and is presented in
240 to 1 aspect ratio but it wasn't shot
anamorphic it was instead shot with
spherical lenses in order to help convey
the gritty tone Fincher intended indeed
Fight Club is easily Fincher's grungiest
work to date, the image is coated in the
thick layer of grime and sludge that's
representative of the toxic philosophies
espoused by its antihero subjects the
foundation of Fight Club distinct look
is built with
Fincher's aesthetic signature high
contrast lighting with lots of practical
lights incorporated into the framing 
and a cold sickly green teal color tint.
Fincher in Cronulla further expanded on
this by employing a combination of
contrast rushing underexposing and 
re-silvering during the printing process
 in order to achieve a dirty decaying look.
The production of Fight Club also
generated some of the earliest public
reports of Fincher's proclivity for
shooting obscene numbers of takes.
A technique also employed by Fincher
cinematic for Bayer Stanley Kubrick. Both
men employed the technique as a way 
to exert control over their actors
performances and wear them down to a
place of naturalistic non acting while
this earns the ire of many a performer it 
also earns much respect for a
director willing to sit through the
tedium of dozens upon dozens of takes in
order to really mold a performance in the editing room.
In a career full of visually dynamic films Fight Club is
easily the most volatile and kinetic of
them all. Fischer employs a number of
visual tricks to help convey a sense of
surrealist reality speed ramping playing
with the scale of objects like
presenting the contents of a garbage can
as if we were flying through the Grand
Canyon
and Norton's narrator breaking the
fourth wall to address the audience
directly a technique he later use an
infamous effect and Netflix's house of cards series.
Production designer Alex McDowell supplements
Fincher's glammy vision with imaginative
dungeon-like sets in which the houses
Unleashed sense of masculinity all while
countering with the sterile colorless
environments in the narrator's office and apartment 
interestingly enough the
narrator's apartment is based almost
exactly as Fincher's first apartment in
Westwood an apartment he claims that he
had always wanted to blow up. The games
editor James Hagen returns - so all
these elements together into a
breathtaking edit with manic pacing and
psychotic energy creating something of
an apex for the particular sort of music
video style editing that emerged in 90s
Fincher films.
Fight club might just be the farthest thing
commercially speaking from a
conventional Hollywood film so it stands
the reason that a conventional Hollywood
score would be ill-fitting at best 
and disastrously incompatible at worst this
meant that Howard Shore who had scored
Fincher's previous two features had to go
really any conventional film composer
had to go in favor of something entirely new.
In a selection of electronic trip hop duo the Dust Brothers Fincher
received a groundbreaking score
comprised almost entirely of drum loops
and found sounds
And then of course there's the Pixies
where's my mind a rock song that will
live in infamy because of its inclusion
in Fight Club's face-melting finale
The music of Fight Club is further
heightened by the contributions of
Fincher's regular sound designer Ren
Kleiss who was awarded with an Oscar
nomination for his work on the film. 
A main reason that Fincher responded so
strongly to his initial reading of
Palahniuk novel is that it possessed
several themes that Fincher was
fascinated by and like to explore in his films
On a philosophical level the story
contains strong ties nihilism with Tyler
Durden enthusiastic rejection and
destruction of institutions and value systems.
and the subsequent
dehumanization that stems from fight
clubs evolved mission objective which
extrapolates nihilistic virtues to their extreme 
The novel's overarching screed against commercialism
also appealed Fincher who gleefully
recognize the inherent irony and the
director of commercials making a film
about consumerism as the ultimate evil.
Fincher plays up this irony throughout
the film by including lots of blatant
product placement there's apparently a
Starbucks cup president in every single
scene. this countercultural cry against
commercialism and corporate appeasement
is inherently Punk which is yet 
another aesthetic that fincher  has made potent
use of throughout his career. 
with Fight Club Fincher also finds ample
opportunity to indulge in his own
personal fascinations his background at
ILM and subsequent familiarity with
visual effects results in an approach
that relies heavily on cutting edge
effects. This can be seen in the
strangest sex sequence in cinematic
history which borrows the bullet time
photography technique from The Matrix to
turn Pitt and Carter into enormous
copulating monuments that blend and
morph into one single mass of biology.
The idea of stitching numerous still
photographs to convey movement where the
traditional use of a motion picture
camera would have been impractical 
or impossible also allows Fincher to rock
it through time and space such as in the
scene where we scream from the top of
the skyscraper down to find a van packed
with explosives in the basement garage.
Architecture also plays an important
role with Doran's decrepit yet organic
house on paper Street resembling the
grand old Victorian houses in Ellie's
Angelino heights neighborhood 
and juxtaposed against the faceless
monolithic city skyscraper
that are destroyed in the film's climax.
Here as in his earlier features Fincher
tends to frame his subjects from a low
angle looking up this is done as a way
to establish the realism of his sets and
locations while imbuing the subjects
themselves with an exaggerated sense of power and authority.
Fight club also contains Fincher's most
well-known opening credits sequence 
a dizzying rollercoaster ride through the
narrator's brain beginning with the
firing of impulses in the fear center
the camera pulls back at breakneck speed
with our scale changing organically
until we emerge from the Edward Norton's
sweat slicked forehead and slide 
down the polished nickel of the gun barrel
lodged in his mouth.
It's an incredibly arresting way to
start a film and prepares us for the
wild ride ahead. Finally Fight Club
allows Fincher to really play with the
boundaries of his frame and reveal the
inherent artifice of the films making.
This conceit is best illustrated in two
scenes. The first is the cigarette burns
projection with him scene where the
narrator reveals Tyler's fondness 
for splicing single frames of hardcore
pornography into children's films by
explaining the projection process to the
audience in layman's terms. 
This scene is present in the novel but Fincher's
approach of it is further informed by
his own experience where he has a movie
projectionists at the age of 16 where he
had a co-worker who collected random
snippets of a given film's most lurid
moments into a secret envelope.
The second seatin question is
Tyler's infamous you are not your
fucking khakis monologue to the camera
whereby his intensity causes the film he
is recorded on to to literally wobble
and expose the film sprocket holes, 
the effect is that that the film literally
disintegrating before our eyes the story
has gone off the rails and now we're
helpless to do anything but just go
along for the ride
Fincher's terrible experience with the
studio on Alien 3 directly contributed to
Fight Club being as groundbreaking and
shocking as it was.
 
When studio executives most notably Laura
Ziskin inevitably bristled at the sight
of Fincher's bold uncompromising vision
and all its glory their attempts to tone
it down were blown up in their faces by
 a director who had already been burned by
their tactics once before and it was one
step ahead of their game once Fichter
knew how to play as meddlesome
executives to his benefit he became
truly unstoppable.
Fight Club made its world premiere at the 
Venice Film Festival and its
worldwide theatrical run was met with
polarized reviews and box office
disappointment.
Quite simply audiences were not ready
for Fincher's abrasive vision however 
it was one of the first films benefit from
the DVD home video format where it
spread like wildfire amongst eager young
cinephiles until it became a bona fide cult hit.
 It probably could have been any other way.
Fight Club was made to watch
and re-watch over and over again to pour
over all the little details in Easter
eggs at Fincher & Company peppered
throughout to clue us into the true
nature of Tyler Durin's existence fight
clubs release also had real-world
implications in the formation of actual
underground fight clubs all across the
country in mining the dramatic potential
of a fictional masculinity crisis Fight
Club tapped into a very real one 
that was fueled by a noxious brew of feminism
political correctness the new millennium
metrosexuality
and frat boy culture a subgroup that
glorified the carnage and violence while
ironically failing to recognize the
film's very palpable homoerotic undertones.
15 years removed from fight
clubs released the film stands as the
apex of the cynical pop-culture
zeitgeist of the 1990s as well as a
defining thesis statement for a
cutting-edge filmmaker with a
razor-sharp relevancy.
After the release of Fight Club
Fincher's feature career was
well-established
in theory he had earned the privilege of
never having to return the commercial
and music video work again but unlike 
a lot of filmmakers who followed this path
Fincher didn't necessarily see features
as the be-all end-all of his career so
in 2000 before pre-production to his
follow-up to Fight Club got off the
ground Fincher was able to squeeze in a
music video for Judith the hit single
from post grunge rock band a perfect circle.
Judith is incredibly grainy and
grimy in accordance with fincher's
aesthetic during this period 
he incorporates a jumpy film conceived that
mimics the nervous manic energy of Fight
Club.
visually the piece is well within
Fincher's willhouse well with this high
contrast lighting and cold brown color
palette but what really distinguishes
Judith as the Fincher work is its
exploration of the artifice of
filmmaking. Fincher loves to play 
with the boundaries of his frame and here he
exposes the weaknesses of film as
recording medium this is a cheap most
likely BS CGI and post-production
effects work that mimics the look of
degrading the film light leaks scratches
fluctuating contrast and the drift that
occurs when the projected film can't
quite line up evenly along the perimeter
of each individual frame.
The expansive sprawling nature of Fight Club story
meant that Fincher spent a great deal of
the film's production and a van
travelling to and from the film's 400
locations naturally he wish to downscale
his efforts with his next project and
find a story that took place in a single
location he found it in a screenplay by
David Koepp called panic room inspired
by true stories of small impenetrable
fortresses at New York City's wealthy
elite were building for themselves
inside their homes because the story
lent itself so well to an overtly
Hitchcockian style of execution in form.
Fincher approaches fifth feature as an
exercise in pure genre refusing to
elevate the material with the infusion
in a potent allegory and subtextual
thematics like he had done with Fight
Club or even seven.
Jodie Foster is
compelling as lead heroine Meg Altman 
a recently divorced and fiercely maternal
woman whose initial mild-manneredness
gives way to a resourceful cunning bravery.
Interestingly foster replaced
original actress Nicole Kidman who had
to leave the production due to the
aggravation of an earlier injury despite
the short notice
Foster exhibited enormous dedication to
the role by giving up her chair on the
Conn Film Festival jury as well as
working through the pregnancy of her second child.
Kristen Stewart who was only 11 at the
time of filming turns in a great
performance as Sarah Meg's spunky
rebellious daughter blessed with an
intelligence beyond her years and the cynicism a match.
Stewart provides a nice balance to Meg's refined femininity with
a rough tomboyish
and androgynous quality something which
Foster had herself at Stuart's age 
in making the character of Sarah diabetic
Stewart is able to become an active
participant in the suspense and
engages on a personal visceral level
The three burglars antagonizing our leads prove
just as compelling due to a complex
combination of values and virtues 
that cause conflict between them the most
accessible of the three is Forest
Whitaker is Burnham a professional
builder of panic rooms and a sensitive
arbol man who projects a warm
authoritative presence 
This complex physicality is essential to the success
of the role at Fisher's choice of
Whitaker we previously knew not as an
actor initially but as a fellow director
of propaganda films is an inspired one.
Burnham is compelled by obligation to
his family not greed meaning that while
he's misguided in his attempts to right
his wrongs he's not beyond saving. 
 His antithesis is Raoul a mysterious
volatile man who quickly asserts himself
as the group's dangerous wildcard Raoul
is played by Dwight Yoakam a country
singer turned actor who injects a great deal of menace to the proceedings.
 Jared Leto who previously appeared in Fight
Club benefits from the expanded screen
presence that the character of jr.
affords him Jr is the self designated
leader of the operation but he quickly
finds control the situation slipping
from his grasp as the night unfolds 
Leto finds an inspired angle into what would
otherwise be the stock hot-headed
impatient villain archetype by turning
jr. into a trust-fund kid whose
ill-advised attempts at giving himself
some edge like those atrocious
dreadlocks for instance only lead him 
to being taken even less seriously by 
the hardened criminals he's trying so hard to impress.
panic room like all of
Fincher's feature work before zodiac was
filmed in the super 35 millimeter film
format while shot open map in the
full-frame Academy aspect ratio the
finished film was presented in the
anamorphic aspect ratio so that Fincher
has total freedom to compose the frame
as he sees fit. He does it this way 
as opposed to natively shooting anamorphic
because he apparently hates limited lens
choices and shallow depth-of-field that
plagued the process Fincher hired his
seven cinematographer Darius Khodji to
shoot panic room but Khodj left the
production two weeks into the shoot over
his misgivings about Fincher's
meticulously planned and extensively
pre-visualized approach which cycled any onset spontaneity.
cinematography duties
were then passed on to Conrad W Hall
not to be confused with his father the
legendary Conrad Hall who shot road to
perdition and Cool Hand Luke. 
Hall jr. proves adept at replicating Fincher
signature aesthetic via a high contrast
lighting scheme in a cold color palette
whereby traditionally warm incandescent
bulbs glow a pale yellow and the harsh
fluorescence of the panic room take on a
blue teal cast Fincher's meson sin is
dotted with practical lights creating an
underexposed moody image that is
bolstered by a no light approach meaning
that Fincher and Hall sought as much
darkness as they could get away with
primarily using the extremely soft light
afforded by Kino Flo rigs a highlight of
panic rooms look is a constant fluid and
precise camera that glides and floats
through the house as if unfettered by
the limitations of human operation this
technique is achieved through the
combination of a techno crane and CGI
that stitches multiple shots into 
one seamless move the best example of this
is the virtuoso long take that occurs as
the burglars break into the house.
We first see them arrive and swoop
through the house as they try various
entry points all the while taking the
time to show us Meg and Sarah asleep and
unaware of the impending danger.
This shot would have been impossible to
achieve before the rise of digital
effects a revolution that Fincher helped
usher in due to his familiarity with the
process from his days at ILM because of
his natural grasp on digital filmmaking
tech he's able to turn this incredibly
complicated shot into a thesis money shot.
 Condenses his entire visual
approach for the film into a single
moment while effortlessly establishing
the geography of the house and orienting
us for what's to come.
In developing panic room he realized he wanted to create the
entire house as a singular contained
studio set so that he could exert
complete control all of Alfred Hitchcock's rear window.
Toward that end he hired
sevens production designer Arthur max to
construct a fully featured house as one
continuous structure inside a large
soundstage with walls and floors that
could be flowing out to accommodate 
a camera gliding through the set.
Max's work here is nothing less than
masterful as an area seemed the
complicated construction exposes itself
throughout the entire film the same
could be said of the fluid edit by
editor James Hagen working in
collaboration with Angus Wall panic room
is Wall's first feature editing job for Fincher
and a success here has led to continued
employment in Fincher's later futures
After a brief hiatus during the
production of Fight Club composer Howard
Shore returns the Fincher's fold with a
brassy old-school score that oozes
intrigue and foreboding during this time
Shore's resumed the scoring duties for
Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
 So panic room was an assignment
taken on precisely because of his low
musical demands as it turns out Shores
work in panic room is generally regarded
as some of his best and most brooding
The score is complemented by a superb
sound mixed by Fincher's regular sound
designer Ren Kleiss. When done right
genre is a potent conduit for complex
ideas in allegory with real-world implications.
Panic room is essentially
about two women fending off three male
home invaders but it is also about much
their surveillance state, income
inequality the switching of the
parent-child dynamic the list goes on. 
A visionary director like Fincher is able
to take a seemingly generic home
invasion thriller and turn it into an
evocative exploration of resonant themes
and ideas for instance panic room
affords Fincher the opportunity to
indulge in his love for architecture
letting him essentially design and build
an entire house from scratch the type 
of architecture that the house employs is
also telling adopting the handsome wood
and crown molding of traditional
brownstone houses found on the East Coast.
Architecture also serves an
important narrative purpose for the
story incorporating building guts like
air vents and telephone lines as a
dramatic hinging points out of
destructor heroes progress and buid
suspense.
Again Fincher employs low angle
compositions to reveal the set ceiling
in a bid to communicate the locations
realness as well as instill a sense of
claustrophobia. Fincher's fascination with
tech is woven directly into the
storyline which allows him to explore
the dramatic potential of a concrete
room with a laser activated door and
surveillance cameras and monitors. 
The twists however is that despite all this
cutting-edge technology
well cutting edge in 2002 both the
protagonists and the antagonists have to
resort to lo-fi means to advance their
cause. Another aesthetic idea of that
Fincher have been playing with during
this period is the idea of micro sized
object size up to a macro scale. Fincher
echoes this conceived in panic room when
he's zooming in on crumbling concrete
until it's as big as a mountain 
or diving through a gas hose as the
burglars pumped propane gas into the
panic room or even jumping inside the
glass enclosure of a flashlight to see a
close-up of the bulb sparking on and off
Fincher's ties this visual idea in with
another signature of his films
imaginative opening credits sequences
with panic room he places his
collaborators names against the steel
and glass canyons of New York City as if
the letters themselves were as big as
the skyscrapers and had always been a part of 
their respective structures. 
Finally the nihilistic Punk Flair that hangs
over Fincher's filmography has a small
presence in Kristen Stewart's
androgynous stylings as well as the
appearance of the Sex Pistols Sid
Vicious on one of her t-shirts. 
Fincher's desire to exert pole control
the shoot via meticulous set building and
extensive computer pre-visualization
ended up working against him making for
a long strenuous shoot bogged down by
technical difficulties in a crawling pace.
However the effort was worth it
Panic room was a box-office hit upon its
release receiving generally positive reviews.
As a lean mean thriller, panic
room is incredibly exhilarating and
well-made more importantly panic room
would be the last feature that Fincher
ever shot on celluloid film the new
millennium would bring the swift rise of
digital filmmaking a technology that
Fincher as a noted perfectionist and
control freak would swiftly embrace
Panic Room closes the book on the first
phase of Fincher's feature career. 
A phase marked by gritty subversive fair
shot on film and heralded the arrival of
a new chapter that would solidify
Fincher's legacy as one of our 
best living filmmakers. 
