Movie Review - 'P2'

P2

Starring Rachel Nichols and Wes Bentley
Directed by Franck Khalfoun
Rated R

P2 is admirable for a couple of reasons, but it's not going to reinvent the horror movie wheel.

I liked that it pits one character against another and it's squarely a battle of wits. I liked its setting - people, particularly women, have had fears of dark, quiet parking garages for years. I thought the heroine (Rachel Nichols) was believable about 70% of the time, and while I thought the villain (Wes Bentley) was wholly unbelievable, he had some great dialogue.

The setup couldn't be simpler: Late one night, a beautiful woman gets trapped by a stalker in a parking garage. Extending that out a little bit, the stalker is the creepy guy who works in the garage late at night, so that doubles the fun.

Another thing I admire about P2 is external: I like that you can make films that are probably slam dunks for your audience for well under ten million dollars. That's an exceedingly good thing for the industry.

But the picture is not perfect for P2. What could be an extremely claustrophobic story doesn't feel that way. The filmmakers somehow get diverted and involve other characters just enough to let you know they can't do the whole thing with just the two principals. From the moment she gets trapped, this movie should be mano e mano. There shouldn't be anything else at all.

There comes a point at which the pain thresholds for both characters is a little ridiculous. Granted, they usually are in movies in this vein, but I expected more out of a film that by design was stripping away almost all of the fluff.

Also, the film was co-written by Alexandre Aja, whose High Tension created exactly that with a similar set of circumstances, although the circumstances changed over time in that film. But P2 never comes close to matching its fright or its own potential, and in the end it's more a curiosity than anything else.