P2 (2007)

My best five-word description of P2 is "Turbulence in a parking garage," which could almost pass for a complete review. There's very little substance in this horror/thriller, which hinges on its ability to create psychologically believably characters and create a convincing frightening scenario... but ultimately comes up just a little short on both counts. Decent production values, a solid performance from Rachel Nichols, and some well-meaning themes prevent this from being a total loss, but the movie's merits are overshadowed by its shortcomings to a degree that's hard to overstate.

The premise is about as barebones as these things get: a woman is trapped in a parking garage on Christmas Eve by the attendant, who she discovers has been stalking her. The two of them are the only characters with more than a minute or two of screentime: this is by design a barebones story meant to focus on the attendant's psychosis and her reaction. But maybe the filmmakers realized that wasn't working, so they tried to up the gore to compensate. There are only a couple sequences where this comes up, but when it does the movie attempts to go all out, opting to put as many grisly details as possible onscreen. It feels out of place, highlighting the movie's inability to commit to whether it wants to be serious suspense or shlocky horror. Not that it really matters: it doesn't manage either.

Let's talk story. I mean, I've mostly already covered the basics, honestly, but I feel like this review should be longer than two paragraphs. The protagonist is Angela (Nichols), who works late on Christmas Eve only to discover her car (located in the underground garage) won't start. Other than the attendant, she believes she's the only one left in the building (put a pin in this - we'll circle back). Said attendant is Thomas (Wes Bentley), who pretends to help her and invites her to share his dinner. She declines (she's supposed to go to her sister's), so - after stretching the runtime with some unnecessary filler - he knocks her unconscious with chloroform, puts her into a dress, and chains her to a table where he's laid out a holiday dinner.

I should also mention he has a huge rottweiler, which naturally frightens Angela. She's of course not having any of this, but there's not much she can do until he unties her to show her the "Christmas present" he's prepared. That would be one of her coworkers, an older man who aggressively tried to kiss her at a party, bound to a chair elsewhere in the garage. Thomas expects Angela to beat the helpless man, but she insists he was drunk and apologized. So instead Thomas brutally murders him with his car (this would be one of those bizarrely gory sequences). Angela uses the opportunity to escape, but with the garage locked there aren't many places for her to go. She eventually manages to seal herself in the elevator, but is forced out when Thomas starts filling it with water. He also drops the body of another one of her coworkers on it. We're never given any explanation for why Thomas killed this guy, but I suppose it doesn't matter.

Angela goes on the offensive and uses an axe to take out a bunch of the security cameras Thomas has been using to maintain the upper hand. She also gets to his office and finds a video of him molesting her when she was chloroformed at the beginning.

He eventually catches up with her, knocks her unconscious, and leaves her in the trunk of a car. But by now she's managed to get a message out (she had her cell phone briefly), so a couple cops show up and look around. This doesn't go anywhere, but it eats up a couple minutes and distracts Thomas while she gets out of the car.

He sends the rottweiler after her, but she manages to kill it with a tire iron she used to escape the car. This infuriates Thomas, culminating in a showdown with both characters behind the wheel of opposing cars. They play chicken, and Angela seems worse off. Thomas goes to pull her out of the car (his objective remains controlling her, not killing her), and she reveals she's not in as bad shape as she appeared. She cuffs him to the wrecked car then ignites some gas and walks away, leaving him to die in the ensuing fire and explosion. She finally makes it out, and the movie ends with emergency vehicles drawn by the fire alarm approaching on Christmas morning.

To the movie's credit, it's less trashy than movies like this tend to be, particularly those made in the '00s (there's no equivalent to the seduction scene in Turbulence, even if Thomas feels at times like a carbon copy of Ray Liotta's character from that movie). In addition, the movie seems to be driven by admirable themes and ideas: this explores gaslighting, male entitlement, and the hypocrisy of "nice guys." But while I think it's coming from a good place, the cartoonish depiction of Thomas makes it all come off as childish and unserious. He's a stereotypical sociopathic killer, which undermines the social commentary you'd get if he actually resembled a "normal guy."

The holiday elements are more or less what you'd expect. There's the "Christmas romance gone bad" aspect to Thomas's ham-fisted attempts to force a romantic comedy, as well as the use of heightened isolation you get around the holidays when spaces typically full of people are largely abandoned. Thomas plays a handful of holiday tunes, and his office is decorated to keep the season in mind. The ending, in which Angela walks barefoot away from the building in the snow, also has echoes of The Little Match Girl, though the implication is she survives. That bit made for some nice iconography, but it's all pretty by-the-book for this kind of movie.

And by now I've seen a lot of these. The basic idea is to mashup Black Christmas and Die Hard, using the holidays as an excuse to minimize the sets, cast, and (most importantly) budget. There are a lot of movies pitting a sole protagonist (or sometimes a few) against a sociopathic killer during the holidays, and it's not hard to see why: this formula makes it relatively easy to stretch resources and deliver something that looks pretty good at a fraction of the cost of larger productions. Assuming Wikipedia's numbers are right, they made this for 3.5 million, so even the disappointing 7 million it pulled in likely turned a profit.

For what it's worth, P2 looks pretty good. Or at the very least, it looks like a movie, rather than a TV show or independent production. The makeup is believable, the elevator set piece is executed well, and the car crash is convincing enough. And, as I mentioned at the start, I thought Rachel Nichols was good in the lead role. Wes Bentley is good, too, though he's sort of acting in a different movie, and Nichols's approach is closer to what I think director Franck Khalfoun was aiming for (though, to be honest, I could be misjudging the intent).

But the good stuff just ultimately just kind of flounders in the flood of mediocrity. That's the larger issue here: as a whole, I mostly found this one boring. The idea driving this isn't bad, but it is a bit unforgiving: if you're going to do yet another suspense following a woman battling for her life in a closed environment, you need to either surprise us with something new or start with a script and characters so good we're glued to the screen. If you're looking for one that gets it right, I'd recommend the 2022 movie, The Apology, which revolves around a similarly awful man obsessed with controlling the protagonist but delivers a story that feels emotionally rich and psychologically interesting.