[DVD REVIEW (R1)] P2
With the horror genre stuck in a rut of its own making, whereby the films being produced on American soil are gore-soaked but scares-light, audiences are having to either look to foreign shores (The Orphanage or [Rec] for example) or return to watching the DVDs of their vintage classics ‘of old’ (Halloween, Friday The 13th, The Shining etc.) to get their fix. Attempts to replicate the “old school” style (Hatchet for example) have been mixed to say the least. All hail P2 then; a horror movie with an unoriginal concept, an original setting and a deep-rooted desire to just follow the 80s stalk-and-slash template to the letter and give us a good, old-fashioned, unpretentious ‘cat-and-mouse’ chiller.
P2 (or P2: A New Level In Terror if you want to go buy the French/Canadian DVD cover. “New Level”? Ha Ha. Do you see what they did there? Ho, Ho… Erm… Sorry!) is a throwaway piece of horror//thriller entertainment that is worthy of your attention. It had a good word-of-mouth going until a certain writer at Aint It Uncool denounced it after months of building up its reputation. Good word-of-mouth is something P2 is deserved of.
If you liked Switchblade Romance (I did up until its silly third act twist) or the remake of The Hills Have Eyes then this is worth putting on your one-to-watch list. Especially considering the director of those films, Alexandre Aja, developed the story, co-wrote the screenplay and produced this film for his friend, Franck Khalfoun, to direct. It’s got a good sense of pace, builds a nice creepily effective atmosphere and doesn’t skimp on the gore whilst at the same time making sure it isn’t dominant over those all important scares and tension-soaked moments.
P2 is essentially a two-hander starring Rachel Nichols and Wes Bentley. Nichols plays Angela, a work-obsessed twentysomething who finishes late on Christmas Eve to complete an important contract. When she gets down to the parking garage, her car won’t start and she finds herself locked in. Turning to the only security guard on duty (Bentley) for help, she laughs off his invite to a little ‘holiday cocktail’ only to wake up bound and gagged in his office on level P2. If Angela is going to see Christmas morning then she’s going to have to get free and stay one step ahead of the guard’s psychopathic obsessive desire for her.
Nichols does well with a role that effectively requires her to strip down to a see-through dress and play the time-honored “scream queen” and she keeps both our attention and sympathy fixed on her for the full 98 minutes by never making those stupid choices and mistakes that many of her ‘type’ do in horror films. Kudos also needs to be given to Bentley who finally delivers a performance worthy of the acclaim he achieved in American Beauty nearly ten years ago. The villainous psycho role isn’t a particularly credible one but he does well with it.
The level of shocks and tension on show are handled pretty well and are plentiful within the film’s short running time. So much so that we can almost forgive the film for going a bit “silly” in its final act when it descends into car chases, car crashes and explosions. All in all though, I don’t know what intentions the distributors have here in the UK but it would appear that they completely mishandled the film’s release in the US. No sooner had one particular website published a bad review after months of hyping it, then it appeared on DVD. It would be a crying shame to see a straight-to-DVD release here in the UK. When films as piss-poor as Saw IV and The Hitcher (remake) are getting big screen releases, this is the sort of unpretentious shocker that could do good business on a quiet weekend.
It’s not going to top the league of any stalk-and-slash films, nor is it going to be the start of some increasingly-worse-with-each-entry franchise (at least I hope not) and for many it’ll probably be too unoriginal for their tastes, but P2 achieves everything it sets out to do as a low-level horror and, in an age where genre filmmakers seem obsessed with who can get the best dismemberment or most unique incident of blood-letting, it should be commended for putting gore as a secondary measure to the scares.
*** 1/2
(That’s Three and a Half “Popcorns” By The Way)
One Response to “[DVD REVIEW (R1)] P2”
I still cannot believe the level of vitriol that this film is garnering with the UK press. So it’s not a great movie. It’s not a classic or anything like that. But it is GOOD. It does offer a good time within its genre. I think people are being too harsh on this flick. It’s an under-rated gem!
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