P2 (Parking Level 2)

All my reviews will contain spoilers. Just so you know.

This one was a DVD rental. I had heard mixed reviews of the film, with the majority of positive feedback coming from people who would not usually watch a thriller or slasher film. Still, Alexander Aja (director and writer for Switchblade Romance and The Hills Have Eyes remake, both impressive in their own ways) produced P2 and developed the story and script, so I had something approaching high hopes for it.

Initial Thoughts:

· How to ruin a Christmas classic: the track Santa Baby plays over shots of a grimy parking lot until an effective jump shock.
· Office politics, people going home for Christmas – why no office parties and half days?
· Nice doggy want a hug?
· Wes Bently has a really, really nice butt. I had not noticed this before.
· Door buzzer at hand, yet the dunce cannot figure out she can let the taxi driver in, hold the door and then leave. Am I missing something here or is the audience going to be expected to cheer on the thickest female lead in recent memory?

Moving On:

· For a romantic first date, don’t just say it with flowers – say it with shackles.
· If someone keeps you in bondage, do not swear at them or I lose all hope that I will grow to like and support your character.
· “Tom, this is really sweet of you...” Come again?
· She just swore at her captor again. Dumbarse.
· “Why are we going down, Tom?” Ah, the innuendo.
· The moral of the story is to be careful who you feel up – you never know who you might meet on the way down.
· Tom, Tom, Tom-Tom-Tom – enough with repeating the name! Wow. He thought so too. Call him shitface and see if that helps.
· When missing your internal organs, take a quick snooze. This sort of thing alone won’t kill you (apparently – Dario Argento thinks this too, the loon bucket).
· How do you hide from someone with access to cameras around the confined space you are trapped in? This is getting creepier again.
· Fact - Bag ladies live on the street because they such thoroughly hideous human beings. Honest.
· “I can stay here! In this parking lot! All by myself! 'Cause that's obviously what everybody wants!” Meh. Personally, I don’t think Angela cares either way.
· Fact - A single shock from a taser will knock you out for a few minutes. Honest.
· If I were the police, I would question the carols blaring out around an empty car park – it isn’t exactly normal behaviour.
· Worst. Search. Ever.

Final Moments:

· Wes Bentley is really rather something of a cheeky, hairy hunk. I would start riding it right about now, despite the mental illness, murders and injuries.
· Female drivers, tut-tut, etc.
· Yay – a vehicular face off!
· Yay – Fulci style eyeball violence!
· Never call a moody moo-cow a cunt.
· The Death Wish films have a better grip on real justice than this.

Basically, this is every sociopath of the week movie ever made – just set in a car park. A bit of Sliver here, a nod to Fatal Attraction there, but the setting and one of the lead performances do just about make this one that I should remember in a hazy way, many years from now. Underground car parks are always a little unsettling for their appearance and the sounds, and one of my favourite giallo scenes is set in one (a few fine minutes during What Have They Done to Your Daughters?).

Wes Bently is a revelation here, bar a screechingly hideous woe-is-me shouting fit at one point halfway through (one which I doubt anyone could have pulled off well). His performance is believable and complex, drawing out the well-defined anxiety and isolation of his character to suit the atmosphere of the location. Slowly realising how closely he has studied his captive is remarkably unsettling. The earliest, usually throwaway lines carry a certain hint of menace. The pleasure he takes from control – from isolating someone else – is terrifying to watch. In fact, a major flaw with the development of this inventive villain is that Thomas would feel totally wrong outside of the setting and the unlikely set of circumstances presented to him. I have no idea how he was not spotted as a less than suitable employee. Basically, the performance rings true whilst elements of the character and the narrative do not. Something more specific about his history or some identification of how he copes outside of work would have offered some more genuine depth, and then I think this would be the sort of fondly remembered character piece as Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction or Rebecca De Mornay in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. Regardless, I have seen Bently in other films and cannot remember much about his performances in them (well, he wasn’t much cop in Soul Survivors). Here, he lifts the daft material into something worthwhile.

I used to work as a security guard in a office block, and whilst the vast majority of office workers were (sad to say) rude and ignorant towards myself and my co-workers, there were enough polite human beings to suggest the lonely head-case in this film could have picked a more obvious, interesting victim. Poor Rachel Nichols puts in a good effort as Angela, but why did some creepy guy single out and pursue such a seemingly cold, bland lady? Thomas was supposed to be desperate and lonely, yet I still have no idea why he singled out such an outwardly unlikable character to abduct. Angela has moments where she displays compassionate behaviour, but before Thomas goes crazy at her, these appear to be for the sake of business rather than genuine concern for others or herself. The audience knows she survives moments of abuse by just carrying on, but these are rarely shown as someone fighting back, just letting people take advantage. Her psycho stalker evens her warns her about it repeatedly!

I wanted someone else to finally help out since she spent so much time screwing up on helping herself. When Angela wins through as we all knew she would, she takes things a step too far in a manner which simply does not ring true, and that is a big problem for the movie. I barely cared what happened to her and disliked what the movie thought was worth celebrating about the transformation to her character. Killing a dog is usually employed to get an audience hate a character – even the similar Mark Wahlberg staring movie Fear got this right – but the filmmakers get it wrong here as, regardless of circumstance, the purpose of Angela killing one is set-up to show she is supposed to have started winning the fight she is stuck in. The attempts by the soundtrack at making her final revenge pleasurable are cringe worthy.

The two main characters have a dynamic that is, whilst flawed, interesting, but once the heroine starts to genuinely fight back (having taken her sweet time to do so – sorry to harp on but it really is annoying) the focus is back to her as an individual, and she becomes about 50% less interesting and he becomes 250% more entertaining. Thomas was the more interesting, and occasionally the more sympathetic, character.

The most obvious issue with the film is that, when a movie puts a character in so many tense situations, it’s difficult to get excited by the suspense if the end result of each step of her escape attempt means nothing more than someone else getting bumped off or passing by. One minor character seemingly gets it before Thomas even knows he can keep her captive. Literally every other character outside of the lead two is clearly going to be utterly disposable and clueless.

This movie takes no time to get going, yet then stumbles along, only keeping the momentum up with some unlikely twists and behaviour although, curiously, it was fairly simple to predict where things were going just because the farfetched moments ultimately occur to help reach an obvious point in the plot. Much daftness with a flooding lift totally lost my interest. Happily, most of the other consequences of actions here are finely delivered punchlines of bloodier than expected murder or injury, with unusually sadistic humour (including a mime to Blue Christmas) for a wide-audience thriller. There are several grisly scenes here, and the relish the leads (particularly Bently) bring to these is effective.

Ultimately, this unambitious but fun little movie ends up working as a result of the charismatic villain of the piece and the location, along with a couple of effective jump shocks and a malicious streak far wider than most recent big budget thrillers. It’s a shame that a few little flaws were not polished over properly. I doubt this would have scored the theatrical release it got without the atmosphere captured by such a spacious central environment becoming ever more claustrophobic and bleak. Frankly, it might have benefitted having Aja direct it too.

Grade C+ (Take The Time)