No need to panic

How safe do you feel? Have you said hi to your inner fears recently? Perhaps you have trouble connecting with your daily dose of post- millennial paranoia? Don't, or rather do, worry because director David Fincher is the man who can make the dread come alive.

Fincher's breakthrough movie Seven delved deep into the diabolical recesses of the serial-killer mindset - a host of grislier than thou slasher films followed in its wake. Fincher moved on to The Game, which took wealthy workaholic Michael Douglas out of his secure but joyless life and put him on a joyride to hell. His last film Fight Club depicted a not-too-distant future where young men, emasculated by all-conquering corporate culture, join an underground cult where they beat each other to a bloody pulp to feel real again.

Sitting uncomfortably? You should be because like many rich powerful and famous people before him Fincher has now discovered the panic room - an impenetrable steel-lined security vault complete with video monitors, domestic supplies and outside phone line. The focus of Fincher's latest film has, according to Hollywood security expert Gavin De Becker, long been a secret prerequisite of the millionaire dream home.

At least two of De Becker's clients, Madonna and the late George Harrison, both stalker targets, would certainly have good reason to want such refuge. Now, following 11 September, security concerns dominate the American psyche. It's rumoured that a shadow government is housed in bomb-proof bunkers and Cameron Diaz, Kevin Costner and Warren Beatty have all installed the ultimate modern protection accessory.

Now the secret is out, and in the wake of The Panic Room's US release, installations are on the increase. Fincher, who lives in a gated community and claims to have 'demons you can't even imagine', may sympathise. But in the film, it's soon made clear that the recently divorced and emotionally shattered Jodie Foster and her tomboy-ish diabetic daughter will find that the lock-up housed in their luxurious New York West Side abode is far from a haven.

Like Hitchcock and De Palma, Fincher is a master of bravura technique and audience manipulation who delights in taking his camera through keyholes, air vents, drainage pipes and cracks in the walls. He was glad that three of The Panic Room's leading actors, Foster, Dwight Yoakum and Forest Whitaker, were also directors. 'I thought this is great - these people will know why I am so neurotic.'

A cursory look at his work might have given them a clue - even Fincher's MTV videos suggested an unhinged disposition. Madonna's 'Express Yourself' promo prefigured Fight Club with semi-naked men beating each other up to win Madge's affection. The sexually abused girl in Aerosmith's 'Janie's Got A Gun' shoots her father.

In The Panic Room Foster's daughter is on the receiving end of a shockingly vicious blow. 'Child abuse is ugly,' explains Fincher, 'and we had to get the kid out of the way.'

He calls The Panic Room his 'popcorn movie'. However, his idea of a popcorn movie is 'Straw Dogs meets Rear Window.' Salt, butter and a king-size mallet, please. With all the action confined to a four-storey 'Townstone' ('a cross between a Townhouse and a brownstone' says the estate agent, the similarity to 'tombstone' totally intentional) The Panic Room resembles Home Alone, as directed by the Marquis de Sade. But, the marquis would enjoy inflicting the film's reign of terror a whole lot more than Fincher, who finds directing an agonising experience. 'You're never able to do what you want, ever,' he insists. This is the guy who thought that Seven wasn't scary enough.

'I thought we needed some dismembered bodies. I thought we should get someone from a morgue and chop 'em up.' A man who liked Jaws because after seeing it he 'never went swimming in the ocean again'. 'I don't think movies should entertain. I'm more interested in movies that scar.' Don't forget your Band Aid.