P2

P2

Angela (Rachel Nichols) is stuck working late at the office on Christmas Eve.

After revealing herself to be a fundamentally good egg - letting her secretary clock off early, laughing off colleague Jim's drunken party groping to spare his blushes, ringing her sister to apologise for being late for a family meal - she finally packs up for the night and heads to the building's car park.

On her way to parking level 2 (P2), a lift conversation with another colleague lets us know that the building will shortly be closed for three days …

When Angela's car won't start and her mobile phone has no signal, she grabs her bags and Santa costume and heads to the security guard's office. There, she finds Tom (Wes Bentley) with his rotweiller Rocky.

Tom unlocks the elevator door and bids Angela a good night as she wanders into the foyer and rings for a taxi. But when the cab comes, the main building doors are locked and Angela has to venture back into the car park to find Tom. But he finds her first, and covers her face with a chloroform-caked tissue.

When Angela awakes she's sat at a table in Tom's office. Her ankle is handcuffed to a rail and Tom is smiling manically opposite her, dressed in the Santa outfit. Hey, that was intended for her brother-in-law! Tom's prepared a turkey dinner with candles and roses on the table, and asks Angela to share it with him.

Understandable confused and aggressive, Angela nevertheless entertains the clearly unhinged Tom. Their small talk reveals that Tom knows a great deal about Angela - her family's names, the fact that she's lying when she says she has a boyfriend etc. It would appear that Tom has been admiring Angela for quite some time.

After a prolonged chat Tom shows Angela a security tape of Jim molesting her in the lift, then whisks her in his car to the next parking level … where Jim is waiting, bound and gagged in an office chair.

Angela refuses Tom's request to run Jim over and begs him not to do it either. But Tom's a psycho - naturally - and duly "avenges" Angela's sexual harassment in a deliciously staged bit of overkill.

Realising just how dangerous Tom is, Angela seizes the first opportunity to flee from him. She's a little disadvantaged though - the building's locked, they're all alone in there for the next three days and she's handcuffed. So, her first task is to get into Tom's office and find the keys to the cuffs … but look out for Rocky, Angela!

The remainder of the film is a predictable but well-executed cat-and-mouse picture that benefits greatly from Nichol's sincere performance and very impressive cleavage.

The gore is effective, great FX work heightening the impact of the infrequent but strong burst of ultra-violence. Set design, editing, lighting, the visuals … P2 is a very competent production on all of these fronts.

But there are a couple of major drawbacks. Firstly, Bentley is over the top as the psycho. His character is already hampered by a flimsy script that doesn't even attempt to justify his actions, but Bentley causes further damage with his deranged stares and bushy villain eyebrows. He may as well have "KILLER" tattooed across his face - and yet for some reason the cops that come to investigate at one point are duped by his overtly sinister persona.

Then there's the complete lack of suspense. For all that director Franck Khalfoun keeps the pace brisk and superfluous plot points to a minimum, there's no tension. You know exactly where this is heading and can second-guess almost everything that happens. The film makes no effort to avoid ticking all the usual boxes.

And … how many more films must we endure where no matter what physical or psychological torture a woman is subject to, she only ever really loses her rag when you call her a "cunt"?! Silly.

Anyway, the film looks superb in a pristine, bright and sharp anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer. Images are crisp and detailed, with colours jumping off the screen into vivid life.

Similarly, the English audio options - 2.0 and 5.1 mixes - offer good tone, balance and detail. Optional English Hard of Hearing subtitles are also on hand.

Static menus include a scene-selection offering access to the film via 24 chapters.

Extras begin with an informative but perhaps too self-congratulatory audio commentary track from co-writers Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur.

Next up is the 12-minute Making Of featurette entitled "A New Level Of Terror". Yeah, you can groan now if you like. This is fairly useless compendium of cast and crew interviews interspersed with too many clips from the film. Just in case you missed his name in the credits or didn't bother with the commentary track, Aja pops up to remind us of his role as producer.

"Designing Terror" offers a further 5 minutes exploring the set of the film. There's some interesting behind-the-scenes footage offered here.

Finally, the original 2-minute trailer is presented in anamorphic 2.35:1.

Predictable and unoriginal, P2 at least entertains and despite it's small cast manages to avoid coming across as stagy. It's ultimately nothing new though, and seasoned fans will be hard-pushed not to think of so many films that have trod this territory before, only with better results.

P2 is by no means bad … its problem is that it's not particularly good either.

Also available on Blu-ray.

Review by Stuart Willis


 
Released by Palisades
Region 2 - PAL
Rated 18
Extras :
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