You might be forgiven for thinking the Panic Room is somewhere you'd race to if the washing machine has flooded the kitchen.

Or the hideaway haven under the stairs where you regain composure after reversing your new car into a lamp post.

Unfortunately for newly-divorced Meg (Foster), the Panic Room is the vault-like retreat where she and her daughter have to hide when three intruders break into her New York brownstone.

It's Meg and diabetic Sarah's first night in their new home... but the housewarming party isn't quite going the way she would have planned.

Wisecracking Junior (Jared Leto), thuggish Raoul (Yoakam) and the reluctant Burnham (Whitaker) thought the house was empty - but now their $1m target is in the same room as Meg and Sarah.

Just to make things difficult, the Panic Room has four reinforced concrete walls, a bank of surveillance monitors and an impenetrable door of bomb-proof steel.

So the three villains have to think of a way of getting to the moulah before their two captives manage to raise the alarm.

On the plus side, Burnham works for a company which installs these types of safe havens... but, on the minus side, they are facing a resourceful mother who'll do anything to protect her child.

The first half of this movie has the feel of a slightly darker Home Alone, with Junior's streetwise wit pitted against the dry contempt of the determined Meg.

Then, all of a sudden things get nasty, with the masked Raoul emerging as a bit of a psycho who twigs he might be being ripped off by Junior.

In the middle of all this is the essentially decent Burnham, whose only reason for the robbery is to pay for his alimony battle.

The action is cleverly shot, with the camera effortlessly gliding between the bare rooms while a storm rages outside.

Director David Fincher again opts for the grainy gloom he used so effectively in Se7en, but this thriller quite simply doesn't have that movie's style.

The villains veer wildly between the Three Stooges, Tom and Jerry and a couple of extreme psychotics, while Foster isn't really pushed in her role as a feisty mum.

It's effective and has a few pleasantly shocking surprises - but is conservatively formulaic and you always get the feeling you've seen it all before.

Tim Evans