P2

This is a movie that has been made with some degree of care for a horror film, but the immediate question that comes to mind is why? For all of its fancy filmmaking and above average acting, P2 is an overly bare bones thriller that's been stretched to the breaking point at 100 minutes. This is a premise that cries out for tight editing and a breathless pace. Instead, all we get is a sluggish slog through moldy "girl trapped in a building with a psycho" cliches that take way too long to unfold. Aside from some over the top gore scenes that seem ridiculously out of place with the rest of the film (to the point that they seem to have been inserted to wake up the audience), this is a movie that will find it hard to raise the pulse of even the most timid of filmgoers.

Set entirely in a Manhattan high-rise on Christmas Eve, a woman named Angela Bridges (Rachel Nichols) is working late and is being pressured by both her boss to finish her current project, and her family over the phone who are expecting her for the holidays. As Rachel starts to head for home, she finds that her car has died on her, and every way out of the building has been closed off and blocked. Apparently, Angela works in the rare business building that does not have an emergency exit for employees to use. The only other person she manages to find is Thomas (Wes Bentley), a lonely parking garage security guard with two secrets. The first is that he has been admiring Angela from afar for months now, and knows all about her. The other is that he's a raving psychopath. Thomas takes advantage of the opportunity of them being alone, knocks Angela out, then brings her to his private office where he chains her to a chair and forces her to celebrate Christmas with him. He insists he just wants to be friends, but the whole chained to a chair thing says otherwise. Angela manages to escape, but can't find a way out of the building, nor can her cell phone get a signal so that she can call for help. I guess not only does the building not have an emergency exit, it also does not have a fire alarm she could pull to alert some form of help.

I will say this for P2, compared the numerous other "woman being physically and mentally tortured by a psycho" movies I've forced myself to sit through this year, this is probably the best of the crop. Then again, saying you're better than Captivity isn't really something anyone should consider an achievement. The movie is made well enough. It makes good use of its Christmas setting, with a soundtrack of joyful holiday tunes that kind of give the film a touch of irony when you consider the scene that the song is accompanying. P2 (named after the level of the parking garage where a majority of the action takes place) has also gathered a somewhat stronger than usual cast than these films usually collect. Rachel Nichols (Resurrecting the Champ) makes for a better heroine than the norm, because the decisions she makes usually make some form of sense, which is a welcome change of pace. It's not her fault she's trapped in a bizarre building that was obviously designed by idiots who don't value the safety of the people inside. She at least makes the best with what she's got, and actually manages to come across as being somewhat sympathetic. As the villain, Wes Bentley makes for a fine unhinged maniac who goes from overly meek and nice guy to screaming psycho at the drop of a hat. Yeah, he generates a couple unintentional laughs during some of his tirades, but really, you can't blame him for hamming it up just a little in such a role.

The problem that sinks the movie is that for all its above average surface trappings, this isn't a very good movie underneath. The big problem is pacing. A movie such as this should be fast and intense, and we find ourselves forced to watch Angela sneaking around in the dark with nothing happening for far too long. Eventually, the screenplay by director Franck Khalfoun, along with co-writers Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur (High Tension, 2006's The Hills Have Eyes), starts to go around in circles. We learn pretty early on that Thomas is a psychotic nut, and once we do, he's forced to just wander around in the dark as well, calling out Angela's name over and over to the point that I'm sure this movie will eventually inspire a drinking game where the players chug each time her name is called out. The movie would have been a lot more successful if it had portrayed Thomas as a much more cool and calculating villain who plays with his victims. Instead, he seems just as lost as Angela. The premise is workable, but the movie stretches it out to laughable lengths. As we quickly become frustrated, we start hoping that something will eventually happen.

Something eventually does, but these moments seem to be over almost as quickly as they start. The movie throws in random gore scenes that seem to have been added at the last minute so that the movie could receive a hard-R rating. Now if only they flowed better with the rest of the script. The sequence where Thomas kidnaps a fellow office worker who once tried to rape Angela while drunk, then beats him severely and smashes him up against the parking garage wall with a car is certainly brutal, but meaningless, since the character of the office worker exists simply for shock value. The scene, and the character himself, exist for no other reason than an excuse to put the special effects make up artists to work. The movie would be no better or worse because of it. A later scene where Angela is forced to defend herself from Thomas' vicious attack dog fits a little bit better into the plot, but the cruelty of the sequence once again seems to be emphasized just for the sake of shock value and nothing else. There is a place for gore and shock in horror films, but they have to come from the storytelling, not just there so the gorehounds in the audience can get their kicks.
While better than some of its competition, P2 still comes up way too short to be enjoyable. If the filmmakers wanted to make an intentionally slower paced thriller, they should have added more psychological elements to the plot or the characters. Maybe they could have given Angela some phobias, and have Thomas play upon those, since he's been secretly stalking her for months. As the thinly developed characters they come across as, there's just nothing for us to grasp onto. The best thing I can say about this movie in the end is at least they tried.

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