THE suspense levels are hoiked all the way up to 11 in Seven director David Fincher's excellent thriller.

He sets the scene, constructs the concept and kicks off the good stuff all within the first quarter of an hour, leaving the rest of the film's two-hour running time in which to play out one of the very best edge-of-the-seaters you'll have seen in a long time.

Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) move to Manhattan to begin a new life away from play-away hubbie/dad. They view a luxury brownstone, are introduced to the concept of a panic room - it's a steel-lined safety room in the middle of the house - move in and take stock. On their first night in their new home, though, they are rudely awakened by three bickering blaggers, so it's into the panic room and let the rumpus begin.

Junior (Jared Leto) is after his late father's secret stash of cash which, rather unhelpfully, was not removed before the house was sold. Burnham (Forest Whitaker) is a wage slave for the phone company and Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) is a bit of an enigma - with a gun.

Oh, yeah, guess where the money is? You got it, it's in the panic room. Oh, and young Sarah's on a tight schedule as she has a diabetes-style medical condition that means she needs an injection every few hours.

What unfolds is a superb cat-and-mouse game that manages to break out of the claustrophobic panic room to involve the whole house. Fincher's camera cuts between floors and takes long, sweeping single shots through rooms. Such fluidity is as unexpected as it is unsettling and only adds to the knife-edge drama.

It's matched only by a brilliantly measured script that injects moments of dark humour and resists the temptation to turn Meg into a Ripley-style wonder-woman - there are even a couple of heavily buried Home Alone references to echo the passing similarities between the two movies.

Jodie Foster, who was called up at the last minute to replace Nicole Kidman, takes full advantage of her best screen role in years and is never less than excellent. Jared Leto shows a new maturity and Forest Whitaker manages to make Burnham a sympathetic figure.

For all the wit, style and clever-cleverness on show, Panic Room is, first and foremost, mainstream entertainment and proud of it.

Popcorn was rarely afforded better accompaniment.