P2 (2007) Movie Review, Trailer, Film Still and Poster

U.S. 2007
Director: Franck Khalfoun
Cast: Rachel Nichols, Wes Bentley, Simon Reynolds, Grace Lynn Kung, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee
Rating: R
Release Date: November 9th 2007
Running Time: 1 hour 38 minutess

The Movie Review

P2 film still 1


P2
Storyline:
Cast:
Ending:
Overall:

P2 is one of those rare movies when I can actually feel sorry for the villain. The Pathetic Villain and The Powerful Victim would be much suited title for this movie.

P2's Screenplay is written by Alexander Aja, although he is not the director of P2, it still comes to mind how good Haute Tension is and the mediocre but still interesting remake of The Hills Have Eyes, but everybody can make a mistake, and this movie is a mistake.

On Christmas Eve, Angela (Rachel Nichols) is a career woman who is still working overtime at his office, when she finally decides to go home and meet her family, her car won't start. A friendly parking attendant Thomas (Wes Bentley) offers her help to fix Angela's car. Thomas is unable to fix it so Angela thinks she had better take a cab instead, but again finds herself locked up inside the office building, she goes down to P1 floor ordering Thomas to open the gate. Waiting too long, the cab leaves her while she shouts at it from the P1 floor. Suddenly all lights on that floor goes off, and from the dark someone approaches Angela and put her to sleep with chloroform. Waking up, she finds herself almost naked and tied up with a chain in Thomas' office. It turns out that Thomas is not as friendly as he really is.

Talking about the film as an entry in the horror thriller genre, there's almost zero tense to be found in P2. Angela is running around in a repetitive dull parking garage and Not only the atmosphere doesn't help to build up the tense this movie needs, the music score is also boring. A scene where Elvis Presley’s song is being played, really really drops the tension level to the ground floor. Funny thing is the movie also constantly reminds us that this movie is entitled P2 by showing every possible angle that shows P2 signs. At first the title P2 is intriguing, but after leaving the theater, P2's movie poster becomes incredibly dull.

There is a reason why some movies put more than one victim, because if the (main) victim is only a single woman, most men won't feel empathetic to her, (normal) men usually would hate the psychopath for what his done to her, but only if the psychopath is a cruel and heartless human being. P2 presents a victim who is more like a heroine and a villain who is more like a spoiled frat boy. Yes Thomas does something really bad to other characters besides Angela but technically Thomas never hurts Angela, he loves her, he's a pathetic psychopath. I think Wes Bentley would show better performance in chick flicks as a romantic guy or whatever.

I could say this movie would be the extreme version of a romantic drama movie, but speaking on the level of Horror Thriller genre, P2 only fits to those of you who is new in this genre, since it's not that scary (well to me, it's not scary at all), but it has some gory scenes, included with a psychopath and complete with a girl in sexy wet dress running around and screaming. Nevertheless for fans of this genre, there are much more good horror thriller movies besides P2.

© iwan pranowo of Movielogy.com