So many scary scenes have been filmed in parking garages, why not an entire scary movie? It s not a bad idea, and in the opening scenes P2 (the title refers to a garage s parking level) sets itself up as a chilling suspense film. If this had been made before Saw and the wave of gruesome tortures it inspired, then P2 might have been a neat and tense little thriller.
But P2 was directed by Franck Khalfoun and written by Alexandre Aja and Gregory Lavasseur, the team behind the remake of The Hills Have Eyes and High Tension, France s answer to the Saw / Hostel craze. So what could have been chilling in the way Wait Until Dark was becomes another repository of sadism, gore and close-up shots of mutilated body parts. Khalfoun s great miscalculation is that these ingredients of modern horror kill the atmosphere and make P2 less scary, not more.
The film s set-up is simple, as it should be. Angela (Rachel Nichols), a pretty would-be executive in her early 20s, works late on Christmas Eve. Although she makes many phone calls to her family promising she soon will join their holiday festivities, she is the last one to leave her Manhattan office building. In the parking garage, Angela screams in frustration as her car s engine refuses to turn over.
When the garage s security guard, Thomas (Wes Bentley of American Beauty ), can t start the car, he invites Angela to share a modest Christmas dinner She rebuffs him. Bad idea. Thomas kidnaps Angela and chains her up in his office. He says he has been watching her for months and is in love with her the standard stalker admissions. The situation is a perfect trap. The building won t reopen for another three days, and Thomas controls all access.