Lonely Blue Christmas: P2 (2007)

P2 (2007)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Rachel Nichols, Wes Bentley and Simon Reynolds

Written by Alexandre Aja and directed by Franck Khalfoun, as in the actor who played the gas stop guy who got a fire axe swung into his gullet in Aja's Haute Tension (2003). So that's two guys from the cult fave modern French Extreme, making a movie about a business woman trapped in a building parking garage during Christmas Eve and getting harassed by a lonesome and very unhinged security guard with intimacy issues.

Looking at it, P2 (2007) has a very thin plot and a direct approach to boot as the movie's basically just one long stalk-and-slash scene between Rachel Nichols' working woman character and Wes Bentley's love-struck psycho. There are some good kills along the way, which I'm thankful for their simplicity yet brutal nature in a year where torture porn's a big cash hype. I'm happy to see this one steps back a bit and just be gorily thrilling without the need of being nauseatingly torturous and, for a movie that takes place inside a parking lot, it boasts a production value that looks impressively stunning with its cinematography and intense in its direction.

The only drawback I can sense here is that, for a thriller-horror that only centers on two main character, they're very one-dimensional. Bentley's hinted to have some sort of mental issues stemming from his past but it's never explored, leaving it more of a foot note to basically another sociopath-turned-psycho killer. Same goes for Nichols' role which is basically just a woman who wants to go home for the holidays, but is held in against her own will. They're paperthin, but, again, the simplicity of the plot works well to their benefit as a identifiable protagonists and antagonists in a popcorn-friendly slasher, wherein we can just feel scared for the trapped final girl for the fact that she is trapped and hunted, while fear the maniac for the fact that he is going to these lengths to get his twisted needs.

With a nice pacing and bloody suspense, I find it hard to reason why this film is so underrated. It's thrilling for the sake of thrill, and, by that, I call it a fair shot because it's honest to what it wants to be. P2 (2007)'s nowhere a cinematic masterpiece, but it's worth a look.

Bodycount:
1 male repeatedly smashed against the wall with car
1 male found dead
1 dog stabbed and impaled with crowbar
1 male handcuffed to a gasoline-leaking car and set ablaze
Total: 4