P2

It being Christmas Eve heres a Christmas Eve horror movie
Rotten Tomatoes

Movie Info

A corporate workaholic finds that her decision to work late on Christmas Eve has potentially deadly consequences in this thriller starring Wes Bentley and Rachel Nichols. It's that time of the year, and as the snow falls outside and families gather around the dinner table, Angela vows to close one last deal before the holiday. Now late for her family gathering, Angela rushes down to the garage in hopes of racing home and catching dinner before it gets cold. When her car refuses to start, her phone fails to get a signal, and everyone else has already left, it begins to appear as if Angela's luck may have finally run out. Thankfully, a friendly security guard appears and offers to lend a helping hand. During the course of discussion, the security guard flirtatiously invites Angela to share the Christmas dinner he has prepared in the parking office -- an offer that the high-powered corporate climber laughingly dismisses. The next thing Angela knows, she wakes up tied to a chair in the cold security office located on level P2. It appears as if the security guard's invitation wasn't optional, and that Christmas dinner was the last thing on his mind. Upon realizing just how serious her situation truly is, Angela struggles to escape her subterranean prison and make it out so that she might live to see another Christmas morning. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Horror&Suspense

In this era of cell phones, two-ways, Blackberries and Wi-Fi, it's become more and more difficult for horror screenwriters to create scenarios as helpless as the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre orThe Hills Have Eyes, in which victims are completely cut off from the outside world and must fend for themselves against those wishing them harm. Sure, you still have movies like Wrong Turn mining that territory, but how many times can you have someone's car break down on a deserted road through the middle of nowhere in this day and age? Ever hear of an interstate?

The Plot

With that in mind, P2 has managed to find one of the last remaining urban deserts for its setting: an underground parking garage. It's late at night on Christmas Eve, and workaholic Angela Bridges (Rachel Nichols) is, as usual, the last person left in her office building. There are two security guards working the late shift -- Karl (Philip Akin) in the lobby and Thomas (Wes Bentley) in the garage -- but it turns out that one of them is a madman who's been stalking Angela, while the other is his first victim. Since Karl is black, and this is a horror movie, I'll let you guess who's who.

Soon enough, Thomas takes Angela captive and forces her to -- Oh no! -- eat Christmas dinner with him. It's clear that the guard is obsessed with her, but otherwise he's non-threatening. He's actually downright Boy Scout-ish, from his youthful looks to his upbeat, aw-shucks attitude. He's sort of a male, CW version of Misery's Annie Wilkes: a rabid, overeager fan who only occasionally hints at a darker side.

Still, Angela is understandably freaked out by the whole handcuffed-to-a-table thing, so she makes several breaks for it. Each time, however, she runs into roadblocks, from non-workingphones to gated exits to locked doors and guard dogs. Can she find her way out, or will she be forced to stay for pumpkin pie? Regardless of the outcome, the moral of the story is clear: family is more important than work. And always keep a carrier pigeon handy.

The End Product

P2 is written to frustrate you. It's a series of near misses and almost rescues that leaves you as exasperated as the damsel in distress. But it's the inadvertent frustrations that prove most troublesome. I mean, I know that Thomas is supposed to be mentally unhinged, but is he so out of touch with reality that he doesn't realize that: A) everything he's doing is being recorded on security cameras, and B) there are probably better places to hide a kidnap victim than your workplace?

Thomas' incompetence (trusting her unchained, leaving her cell phone lying around, seating her at a table with sharp utensils) renders him all the more ill-suited to horror movie villainy. He's just not intimidating -- partly because we know he's not going to harm Angela, and partly because even when he does "lose it," he sounds like a spoiled teenager yelling at his mom. Plus, he's a security guard, for goodness' sake; all he carries is a stun gun and a ballpoint pen. In the end, you almost feel sorry for him when he gets a comeuppance that seems wildly out of proportion to his sins.

Some of the fault for the limp villain lies with Bentley's performance, while some of it lies in the script. This is surprising, given that the French writing team of Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur gave us the terrifying Haute Tension and the remake of The Hills Have Eyes. Compared to those brutal films, P2 is a lightweight, both emotionally and aesthetically. For all its modern trappings, P2 turns out to be a familiar, by-the-numbers tale that just happens to take place in a unique setting.

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