Panic Room

Panic Room (2002)

16 corrected entries

(6 votes)

Corrected entry: You would never give insulin to someone with low blood sugar. It would kill them. (02:53:12 - 02:54:00)

Correction: The syringe is for glucagon, not insulin.

Corrected entry: When viewing the property, Meg's mother reprimands Sarah for riding her scooter and playing with the elevator - but for some reason, both times she calls her Kim, not Sarah, as Meg does.

Correction: She doesn't say "Kim", she says "kid."

Bishop73

Corrected entry: The portrayal of Sarah's type-1 diabetes is loaded with inaccuracies. We saw her eating pizza the previous evening and along with this any sensible diabetic would have injected herself with enough insulin to last through the night, to cope with the sugars in the food she'd eaten. But in the panic room just a few hours later, she apparently needs another dose - wrong. If her condition was due to stress, she would have needed sugar or a glycogen injection, not insulin. In response Meg searches for sugary food to give Sarah. That's correct, but next thing Meg wants to inject Sarah with insulin, which would kill any diabetic in such a state. Finally, when becoming hypoglycemic Sarah thrashes about, apparently having an epileptic fit instead of what would really happen - she would just become very sleepy, lose consciousness and go into a coma. All this demonizes diabetes into a convenient scary plot device but in reality the condition is quite mundane - typical Hollywood.

Correction: They don't mention Insulin. In fact it is the Glucagon that they inject her with in the end. The symptoms of severe low blood sugar are seizure, which Sarah obviously had, loss of consciousness, stroke and possible death. As for injecting enough insulin to make up for the sugary foods she ate, what did she eat? Pizza? Any sensible diabetic would know the limitations on their starch intake. As a Nurse, I found it to be a pretty accurate portrayal.

As a nurse, you should also know that consuming anything in the MRE would have brought her sugar level up. All carbohydrates are, or convert to sugar. Even protein would have helped.

Corrected entry: The first time you see Jodie Foster look at the skylight, there's rain dripping down the side of the glass. Later, when the robbers look at the skylight, there are sounds of rain, yet no drips on the glass. Then, not too long after, Raul looks outside where you can see the rain and people walk by with umbrellas, so it is still raining.

Correction: All the rain is doing is starting and stopping, just like it does in real life.

Corrected entry: There's a toilet in the panic room. If Burnham has as much knowledge about home construction as we've been led to believe, then he should know that a couple of redirected pipes could flood the panic room.

Correction: The designers probably took that into account. The ventilation pipe they shout through would do a lot of the work.

Corrected entry: When Jodie Foster sets the propane alight, she tells her daughter to get under the fireproof blanket, and then gets under one herself. However, she only covers the lower half of her body, so if the propane had set fire to the rest of the room hiding under the blankets would have been pretty pointless.

Correction: That's a character mistake - she was not completely safe from an eventual explosion, but did not have many other options. As it was, she lucked out that the propane did not set fire to the entire room.

Twotall

Corrected entry: In the scene where Forest Whitaker finally drills the lock on the safe. He slides the magnetic drill press out of the way with the magnet still on. The camera zooms in on the orange light that indicates that the magnet is on.

Correction: He switches the magnet off before he moves the drill press, then switches it back on when it's out of the way. You can just see the light go out as he moves his hand in front of the button to switch it off.

Corrected entry: When all three men are together, writing notes to Foster they are all downstairs, you can see the front door in the background. Instead of carrying on with the conversation she could've just run to the bedroom and called 911 on her cell or the home phone.

apple

Correction: At this point, she could not be sure there were only three men in the house. She was unfamilar with the surveillance system, as well as being scared and confused, so it makes sense that she was not thinking clearly.

Twotall

Corrected entry: When the two remaining thieves are in the Panic Room with the young girl about to break into the safe, one pulls back the carpet to reveal the safe. The shot changes and when it changes back, he pulls back the same bit of carpet again.

Correction: He's only pulling back the carpet the rest of the way.

Corrected entry: When the intruders are attempting to communicate with Jodie Foster by writing a note, the original piece of paper snatched from the side of one of the boxes is small, but ends up being larger when held up for Foster to read. Also, where did subsequent pieces of paper come from?

Correction: The pieces of paper Junior takes off of the box become bigger because he unfolds them. There was more than one piece of paper. They were folded together.

Corrected entry: Throughout the film Dwight Yokam is wearing a ski mask. In the beginning it has an opening at the nose for easier breathing, but at the end it does not and has somewhat different form.

Correction: He takes it off in the middle of the movie and puts it back on: this explains it's somewhat different form. Also, if you look closely, you will be able to see a shadow near the nose, which is the breathing hole.

Corrected entry: When they are going to gas the girls with propane they get a garden hose to hook it up. When they do so they stick one metal end into the duct and the other over the valve to the tank. Why does Dwight Yoakam cut the hose in half with a knife? Wouldn't this just let the gas leak into the room that they are in?

Correction: He cuts the hose in half, and then puts the new end onto the propane tank.

The end of the hose doesn't have the same thread as the propane tank. So, he just cut the hose and shoved it over the propane thread and duct taped it to seal it the best he could.

Corrected entry: When Jodie Foster kisses her daughter good night she opens up the fridge and gets a water. You can see that the fridge is stocked with insulin, water and OJ. Later when she goes back and gets the insulin for her daughter, there is no OJ at all, only water and insulin.

Correction: There IS orange juice in the fridge. The camera shows a shot from inside the fridge. Because the shelves are glass, you can see the OJ on the shelf above, next to the black Diapak.

Corrected entry: Jodie Foster's call to 911 would force the police to investigate even after she hung up when being placed on hold. This is standard operating procedure for all police departments.

MCKD

Correction: The very next thing she does is call her ex husband, who immediately calls the police. The cops do show up, in response to his call, making the need to investigate her hang up irrelevant.

jshy7979

Corrected entry: When the mother and daughter were in the panic room and the daughter was going through the containers you see M.R.E.'s (Meals Ready to Eat) in there. Later in the movie, the daughter needs sugar to keep up her sugar level but they couldn't find anything sweet. In an M.R.E. there is chocolate in each one. She would have known this because she opens one up which is laying on the ground as the mother is searching for something for her daughter.

Correction: M.R.Es have carbs which will bring up her sugar level. Diabetics don't count sugar, they count the carbs to determine how much insulin to take. Carbs metabolize into sugar.

Correction: The spirit of the error is basically correct, but as an ex-Army man who ate my fair share of MREs, I had to question the statement "there is chocolate in each one". This statement is false, as can be seen from the menu information provided at http://www.mreinfo.com. It would be more correct to say there would be something sugary/sweet in each one, but there are caveats here too. The Corned Beef Hash menu (circa 1991) for example, contains freeze dried fruit cocktail and cocoa powder, both of which require some prep work to safely consume and are not ideal for someone in a hurry (a person having a fit is likely to choke on powder or unmoistened freeze dried material). Speaking in general nothing can be said conclusively on what might be found in the MREs, but if someone can report on how the individual meals are labeled (or the case, so we know for sure what year or menu series these are from) then the contents could be known.

Corrected entry: In one scene, one of the intruders gets his hand caught in the door of the panic room as it slams shut. However, it is shown earlier in the film that the panic room door is equipped with motion sensors to avoid just such an accident.

Correction: The real estate guy put his hand in the center of the whole area so the sensors picked it up - Raul's hand was on the edge of the door so it would not be as easy for the general sensor to reach that exact spot.

Correction: The sensors are spaced quite widely - they'll stop the door slamming on a large blockage, but not a small one, like a hand.

The chap showing them the panic room in the earlier scenes demonstrated the effect of the motion sensor using his hand. Why wouldn't a hand stop it later?

When we see the guy at the beginning demonstrate it with his hand, we see the laser cross his hand, roughly at shoulder level. He then states that there is another one at ankle level. There are only two safety sensors, and Raul's hand, being roughly at knee level, does not trigger either one of them.

jshy7979

Hands/fingers (especially a child's) were probably most likely to be injured before the introduction of sensors; it wouldn't make sense to install a sensor incapable of sensing hands/fingers or small objects. Even a section of clothing (e.g, shirt arm) would be picked up. My garage door's sensor is sensitive to a small leaf, one black oil sunflower seed, and a bug (to name a few).

KeyZOid

Factual error: After the intruders flood the panic room with propane, Jody Foster's character gets a lighter and ignites the propane causing it to burn along the ceiling. This would be impossible as propane is heavier than air and would sink to the floor rather than rise up to the ceiling. Lighting a flame in that room should have caused anyone in the room and on the floor to be engulfed in flames almost instantly.

More mistakes in Panic Room

Junior: She's coming down to you.
Burnham: Hey, I told you, I don't hurt people.

More quotes from Panic Room

Trivia: Not really a mistake, but an interesting note. When Jodie Foster phones the ex girlfriend listen to the voice on the phone, it's Nicole Kidman's - she was originally chosen for this role but was unable to due to a minor injury.

More trivia for Panic Room

Answer: They wouldn't in real life. This was a plot contrivance.

raywest

It does happen in real life, and it is sadly a common occurrence in big cities. Living in Los Angeles, I've had to dial 911 a few times. I was on hold for 5 minutes once, and I've read articles about people who have been on hold for way longer. With this film being set in New York city, this did not surprise me. Even Meg and Sarah don't seem too surprised by it, and they opt to call Sarah's father instead.

jshy7979

Answer: There could be a serious major event happening nearby where all the resources needed to be sent ASAP. The 911 operator had to prioritize and assumed the current caller's emergency - whatever it was - was less urgent. There could have been a shortage of operators for whatever reason.

KeyZOid

More questions & answers from Panic Room

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.