Panic Room Page #6

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Meg looks at her, impressed. Love that kid.

INT. ENTRY FLOOR - NIGHT

In the foyer, Junior freezes, hearing the elevator stop and

start again.

JUNIOR:

SHE'S COMING BACK UP TOWARD YOU!!

He takes off up the stairs again. Burnham can't take it

anymore, he takes off after Junior, following him upstairs.

INT. FOURTH FLOOR HALLWAY - NIGHT

Raoul, still on the top floor, heads for the stairs, fast.

INT. STAIRWELL - NIGHT

Junior races back up the stairs. They have her caught in the

middle.

INT. THIRD FLOOR HALLWAY - NIGHT

The door to the elevator BANGS open on three, the gate

RATTLES aside, and Meg and Sarah leap out. They take off

down the hall, toward the doorway to the master bedroom.

Raoul flies down the stairs, not twenty feet behind them.

INT. MASTER BEDROOM - NIGHT

Meg and Sarah run through the master bedroom. As she passes

the night table, Sarah swings an open hand to grab her cell

phone from its cradle. But in her haste she starts to pull

it out at an angle and the prongs at the bottom stick in the

charger. The phone slips from her fingers, bounces off the

corner of the table, caroms off her foot, and skitters under

the bed.

Sarah turns, looks to the head of the stairs just as Junior

turns the corner and Raoul thunders down the steps from four.

She abandons the phone, grabs Sarah, and they lunge through

the open doorway to the panic room.

Junior and Raoul burst through the doorway to the bedroom,

just a few steps away.

INT. PANIC ROOM - NIGHT

Meg and Sarah trip over each other coming through the

doorway, they tumble to the floor of the panic room, the door

wide open behind them. Meg spins around, hurls herself at

the red button on the wall --

-- Junior leaps, sailing through the air toward them --

-- Meg SLAMS her open palm on the red button, the massive

coiled spring that holds the metal door open is released, the

steel barrier leaps forward out of the wall --

-- and WHANGS shut in a split-second.

INT. MASTER BEDROOM - NIGHT

Junior SLAMS into the closing metal door, banging his

shoulder into it, and slithers to the ground, too late.

INT. PANIC ROOM - NIGHT

Meg rolls over and pulls Sarah into her arms, both of them

breathing hard, asking each other if they're okay, scared out

of their minds.

But safe.

She spots the telephone, the one with the special buried

phone line. She lunges for it, snatches it from its cradle,

listens for a dial tone.

Nothing there either.

MEG:

Damn it!

SARAH:

It doesn't work?!

MEG:

Different phone line, I never hooked

it up!

She hurls it down, looks back at Sarah. She seems a bit

pale, scared. She goes to her, holds her, reassures her.

INT. MASTER BEDROOM - NIGHT

Junior is slumped at the base of the door, livid, in pain,

pounding on it with his fists, screaming "NO!" over and over

again, crazy with rage.

Raoul stands in the middle of the room, chest heaving, hands

on his knees.

Burnham finally walks into the room and stops in the doorway,

looks from Raoul to Junior to the door to the panic room,

figures out the situation.

BURNHAM:

Tell me... tell me they're not in

there...

We rise up, above them, above the room, looking down on them,

the rats-in-a-maze shot.

We rise up further still, above where the ceiling ought to

be, to look down on this room and the one beside it, the room

behind the four inches of reinforced steel, the panic room in

which Meg and Sarah kneel in the middle of the floor, holding

each other tight.

Standoff.

CUT TO:

INT. PANIC ROOM - NIGHT

Very close on the metal door, from inside the panic room. An

ear moves slowly into frame, presses against the cold steel.

Listens.

Meg pulls away from the door, shaking her head.

MEG:

Can't hear a thing.

SARAH:

What do they want?

MEG:

I don't know. Rob us. I don't

know.

She sits back against a wall, looks around, at the tiny room.

She's trying not to show how freaked out she is.

SARAH:

What do we do?

MEG:

Wait.

SARAH:

What if they get in here?

MEG:

They can't. They can't get in here.

No. They can't.

SARAH:

I heard you.

MEG:

Feel okay?

SARAH:

Yeah.

MEG:

Shaky?

SARAH:

Nope.

MEG:

Chills?

SARAH:

Huh uh.

She checks her wristwatch, for some reason.

SARAH:

Don't worry about me.

The implications being, worry about yourself.

Sarah crawls over to the bank of video monitors, studies

them. Meg crawls over to join her. They scan the screens.

ON THE MONITORS,

there are a dozen different views of the house. Front stoop.

Kitchen. Dining room. Entry floor. Living room. Master

bedroom. Den. Top floor bedrooms, both of them. Top two

floor hallways. Even one with a shot of the inside of the

elevator.

The three intruders are gathered in the living room, standing

in a tight circle, having a hell of an argument. Lots of

gesturing, fingers jabbing in chests, but we can't hear a

word.

IN THE PANIC ROOM,

Meg furrows her brow, noticing something interesting to the

right of the video monitors. She slides over, studies a

panel there with sixteen different buttons and a small

grilled area.

MEG:

Hey...

Sarah joins her, looks at the buttons. Each one is labeled

with a different room name -- den, kitchen, master bedroom,

etc. Up in the corner there is a button that says "ALL

PAGE," down in the opposite corner there's a button marked

"TALK."

Meg looks at Sarah.

SARAH:

Go ahead.

Meg is reluctant, frightened. Sarah is encouraging, for the

first time.

SARAH:

You can do it.

Meg leans forward, clears her throat.

INT. LIVING ROOM - NIGHT

Burnham, Raoul, and Junior are standing in the half-darkened

living room, in the middle of their argument, when a VOICE

booms around them.

MEG (O.S.)

Excuse me.

They practically jump out of their shoes, looking around for

the source of the voice.

MEG (O.S.)

The police are on their way.

Only Burnham has remained relatively calm. After he gets

over the initial shock, he walks toward the tiny camera

that's hidden in an upper corner of the living room wall and

stares up at it. Raoul, who has taken off his ski mask, is

careful to move out of the camera's range, and turn his back

to it.

MEG:

I suggest you leave.

ON THE MONITORS,

Burnham looks up at the camera and shakes his head, wagging a

finger from side to side. He raises a hand, makes a gesture

like a telephone, then wags his finger again. The message is

clear -- you don't have a phone.

IN THE PANIC ROOM,

Meg is puzzled.

MEG:

How'd he know that?

She presses the talk button again.

MEG:

(into speaker)

Take what you want and get out.

That sounded fairly tough. She looks at the monitor again.

ON THE MONITORS,

the three of them have an urgent, whispered conference, then

they all start patting their pockets for some reason, turning

in circles, looking for something.

IN THE PANIC ROOM,

Meg and Sarah watch them, confused.

ON THE MONITORS,

Burnham holds up a finger to the camera -- wait a second --

while Raoul and Junior rush off screen, looking for

something. Junior returns a moment later holding something

and the three of them hunch over a box, working on something.

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