In the spirit of the holiday I decided that I would treat myself to a little horror film. The problem is I am not always the best judge in selecting something because my love of the genre tends to block out the part of my brain that warns me as to how stupid the movie I am about to sit through is probably going to be. That’s how I got stuck watching Skinwalkers last year, and that’s why I ended up watching P2 tonight.
Angela (Rachel Nichols) devotes most of her time to her job, spending the majority of her time at the office. Unfortunately for her, the wrong person has taken notice of this, deciding that he will be the one to bring a little fun to her life. However, this security guard, Thomas (Wes Bentley), doesn’t choose to go about making her acquaintance in an acceptable way, but instead, decides to kidnap her on Christmas Eve, locking her in the parking garage with him.
The eeriness already attached to parking garages sets up the scene for this film, but fails to hold up for its entirety, which results in a slew of samplings from different characteristics of films from this genre in order to replace this loss. There is a lot of running, a lot of crying, a dipping dress that jumps back and forth between a wet t-shirt contest and Carrie’s night at the prom (please tell me she didn’t actually pick this out to wear over to her family gathering), and a few moments of extreme gore that fail to match up with the rest of the film. But worst of all, the opening scene of the film (which is by far the scariest thanks to the eerie sound of the Christmas songs playing throughout the garage) is a big give away to where the plot will find itself at some point later on, indicating that all of Angela’s attempts to escape prior to this moment are completely futile, which led me to lose my hope for her. Sure, any sane person would know that there is no way she will escape before the credits begin to roll, if at all, but still, something seemed ruined by this moment, and her actions no longer matter until the film gets back to this first scene.
Other than the initial fear the parking garage exudes, as well as some moments in Bentley’s performance of a psychopath, P2 ends up being just another weak “horror” film with nothing to contribute to the genre.
Final Grade: D
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