Grade: C

Verdict: "Wait Until Dark" for dummies.

Details: Starring Jodie Foster and Forest Whitaker. Directed by David Fincher. Rated R for violence and language. 1 hour, 42 minutes.

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Review: "It couldn't be safer," coos the real estate agent to prospective buyer Meg Altman (Jodie Foster), who has her sullen teenage daughter, Sarah (Kristen Stewart), in tow.

"It" is a luxurious Manhattan brownstone that Meg plans to buy with the divorce money she got from her adulterous ex-husband.

"Panic Room," directed by David Fincher (“Seven,""The Game") in his trademark hard-edged, flashy style, is about how safety is ultimately about guts, not paranoia. The three-story townhouse has everything: crown molding, high ceilings, even a state-of-the-art security system. The pièce de résistance is the "'panic room," i.e., a hidden room equipped with monitors and a separate phone line installed by the previous owner in case of a break-in. (It's like a bomb shelter for urban paranoids.)

Their first night in the house — a dark and stormy night, natch — three burglars (Jared Leto, Forest Whitaker and Dwight Yoakam) let themselves in. They're on the trail of $3 million they know is in the house. Mother and daughter flee to the panic room, but it turns out they're in the one place they don't want to be. That, of course, is where the money is stashed.

From this point on, the movie is "Home Alone" without the laughs or" Wait Until Dark" without the smarts as Meg struggles to outwit her unwelcome guests.

Making the brutal and complex "Fight Club" must have tired Fincher out (even if it was a few years ago)."Panic Room" takes its slight premise — really, it's the sort of Hollywood pitch you expect to hear batted around on Sunday afternoon by The Pool — and does almost nothing with it. Nothing terrifying or clever or suspenseful, that is. Fincher is more interested in gliding his camera over the expensive kitchen counters or down the polished stair rails or through the vaulted ceilings than he is in mundane details such as character, plot or dialogue. Perhaps that's why he spent money on two cinematographers (Conrad W. Hall and Darius Khondji). The money would've been better invested in a second draft (at the very least).

"Panic Room" suffers from a bad case of TMS — Too Much Stupidity. True, there has to be a certain dumbness factor in a suspense thriller, or else there'd be no movie. But this movie goes waaaay over the line, sliding from dumbness to sheer idiocy. There are too many "why didn't she" moments. Crucial facts are summarily eliminated. (The phone line in the panic room is disabled, for example.) Further, a tedious pattern is soon set up: She does this and they do that, and then she does this and they do . . .

Fincher manages a handful of pulse-raising bits: Meg and Sarah's initial mad dash for the panic room, or Meg's nerve-racking attempt to retrieve her cellphone, just yards away in her bedroom.

The rest of the picture is borderline ludicrous. The bad guys bicker, snipe and shoot at one another while Meg displays unheralded expertise in technology and mathematics.

Foster applies her usual precision and intelligence to her limited part. Just watching her in the early scenes as she sets Meg up as an insecure stumblebum in glasses is a quick lesson in establishing a character. Her transformation into a housebound Sigourney Weaver strains credibility, but Foster's fierce concentration makes it work.

Whitaker brings an interesting quality to any role, but he's hamstrung by the vague script. Leto is unbearable. He's not threatening; he's just annoying. Yoakam wears a ski mask.

Nicole Kidman was supposed to star in "Panic Room," but she hurt herself while making "Moulin Rouge" and had to bow out. Sometimes a knee injury can be a good thing.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution