P2

Plot synopsis:
It's Christmas Eve, Angela Bridges, an ambitious young executive, works late before she leaves for her family's holiday party. When she gets down to the parking garage, she discovers that her car won't start. Her garage is deserted and her cell phone doesn't get a signal underground. When Thomas, a friendly security guard, comes along and offers to help, Angela nervously accepts his gesture of good will. Soon after a failed attempt to start her car, he invites her to stay and share a small Christmas dinner he's preparing in the parking office, but she laughs it off. Angela doesn't realize this is no laughing matter. Thomas has been watching her closely--for months. His dinner invitation is not optional. If Angela wants to live to see Christmas morning, she must find a way to escape from level P2 of the parking garage.(Page last updated by galaxy1056, 7 months ago)The story centers on a corporate climber Angela (Nichols) who gets stuck working late on Christmas Eve before leaving to attend a family holiday party. On her way into the parking garage (P2), she greets the main lobby security guard, Karl. She gets into the parking garage, only to discover that her car won't start. After receiving some assistance (to no avail) from the security guard named Thomas (Bentley) and turning down his offer to spend Christmas with him, she calls for a taxi and waits in the lobby. When the taxi arrives, she discovers she's locked in the lobby and, with Karl nowhere to be found, quickly rushes back to the garage to find Thomas. The lights soon shut down and Angela wanders only guided by the light on her cell phone.She soon after trips dropping everything including her phone.After she retrieves it she shines it on herself revealing Thomas right behind her. Thomas assaults Angela, knocking her out with chloroform on a rag.Later, Angela awakens in a drunken haze inside Thomas's office, her ankle chained to the table, and Thomas presenting her with a Christmas dinner of turkey and mashed patatos. He is curious about her life and asks many questions about her past. Thomas mentions he is currently reading Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises. Thomas emplies that he loves Angela despite her many sins, the same way the novel's main character loves his girlfriend. Despite Angela's pleas and threats, Thomas continues to hold her there against her will, even forcing her to call her family and lie about an illness so that no one will come looking for her. Thomas decides to take Angela for a "drive," and while he is unlocking her chains, she drives a fork into his back, but is unable to escape.Handcuffing her wrists together behind her back, they climb into his car and drive down to P4. There, they find a fellow coworker, Jim (Akin), tied to an office chair. Jim once attempted to get physical with Angela in an elevator after having too much to drink at an office Christmas party, and having seen this on the security videos, Thomas presumed Angela wanted revenge.He tells her this is his present to her. When she refuses, Thomas explains that he has seen Jim touch more than just her and thinks it's unfair that he should be relesed because he apologized. When Angela tries to not only defend Jim but also herself,Thomas begins to believe Angela had deeper feelings for Jim than "just a co-worker" should have maybe even an affair to get a promotion. He changes his mind multiple times, whether he believed her or his own made up idea of how she feels about the married man.After arguing that Anglea should be the one to beat JIm, she gives in and says Yes, either thinking up a plan to run as soon as she's untied or going along with Thomas so she doesn't get hurt. But Thomas disagrees not wanting to make her a "bad person".Instead Thomas beats Jim repeatedly with a flashlight and then rams Jim into the wall with his car multiple times, causing his intestines to rupture out of his body and ultimately killing him. Amidst the murder, Angela is able to escape from the car.Once she has run a considerable distance away from Thomas, Angela manages to slide her legs through her handcuffed wrists so her arms are cuffed in the front of her body instead of the back.While Thomas hides the evidence of Jim's death, Angela rushes back to the office for her cell phone, and also steals some key cards. She finds phone signal near a gate on P1 and attempts to call for help, but drops the phone on the other side, when she sees that Thomas is rounding the corner, and has to leave it behind. She runs to the elevators with Thomas right behind, and enters with help from Thomas's key-cards.She attempts to go to the lobby but the floor button is mysterously broken and winds up back on P1 nearly face to face with Thomas and Rocky (his dog) before taking refuge in an elevator shaft by using the emergency stop between floors. She uses the emergency button to call for help. On the line is a man with a heavy South Asian accent. She pleads for him to call 911 but the man tries to convince her Thomas was just trying to help her. Angela then understands the voice is really Thomas's. He then begs her to come out of the elevator but she refuses. Thomas then forces her to leave by flushes her out by flooding the elevator with a fire hose from a higher floor.As the elevator floods a shadowy object falls from the ceiling later showing it is Karl's persumly dead body.When the elevator finally reaches the next floor it bursts open spilling Angela and Karl into the hallway.Hoping that Karl still may be alive, She tries to awaken him but he wont arouse. Angela then realizes to save her own life she must leave him.(Karl is later seen still on the ground where Angela left him, but now there is a large gash in the side of his head,fresh and maybe evidence he was still alive in the flooded elevator.Thomas then blames him for ruining Christmas and leaves his body in the flooded hall)Angela manages to escape into a shadowy corner of the garage to hide from Thomas, and in the meantime, he plays Elvis songs throughout the entire garage to torment her. Realizing he is keeping track of her with the security cameras, she breaks open an emergency fire axe and begins to destroy them while making her way to his office, prepared to fight. Once entering, she finds video playing of Thomas groping her breasts while she was drugged, and, blinded by her fury she smashes the TV with the emergency fire ax. Thomas then appears and ambushes Angela with a taser.Meanwhile, two police men arrive at the garage and want to patrol the area for anything unusual.Through most of their patrol (unknowingly to them)Thomas has the fire axe,hiding it from view when he speaks to them through his office door, ready to use it. Especially when they come across the boards layed over Jim's leftover blood splatter.They don't check behind it or find anything suspicious about it. Angela soon awakens, realizing she is locked in the trunk of her vehicle. She breaks free and rushes to catch the police before they leave but to no avail, and instead, encounters Thomas and his attack dog at the door. He releases Rocky(the dog) on her, but she smashes the window of a Lincoln Towncar and hides inside. When the dog assaults her inside, she stabs it in the head repeatidly with the tire iron she used to escape from the trunk. Once the dog is dead Angela (now covered in blood) stumbles to a nearby rental car office and calls 911. Thomas soon comes after her, but she manages to spray him in the face with some sort of chemical, taking a handful of rental car keys, and driving away in one of them.On her way to the exit, she is suddenly side-swiped by Thomas in another vehicle, leading up to a game of chicken in which Angela wins. However, in the heat of the chase, Angela flips the vehicle and is presumably knocked unconscious. Thomas opens the door to retrieve her, but having faked her injury, she stabs him in the eye with an envelope opener, chokes him with her handcuff chains, then uses his keys to unhancuff her self and then handcuff him to the wrecked car. Taking his taser, she goes to leave, until Thomas insults her but then notices she is about to ignite a stream of gasoline leaking from the car. He then pleads with her, "why can't we just be friends?" When she doesn't answer his pleas, he insults her by calling her the "C" word.Now, Angela has no mercy for Thomas so she quickly ignites the stream of gasoline, engulfing the car and Thomas in flames. She watches him burn and listens to his screams for a miniute, then turns around and leaves.With Thomas dead, Angela limps(because of the dog biting her leg) out of the garage, onto the snowy streets of New York City, and towards the lights of several ambulences.

Tags: comedy, suspenseful, cruelty, neo noir, murder, psychological, violence, insanity, claustrophobic, revenge, sadist

Review:
A businesswoman (Rachel Nichols) is pursued by a psychopath (Wes Bentley) after being locked in a parking garage on Christmas Eve.The film was directed by Franck Khalfoun, written and produced by Khalfoun, Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur.
Aja has said, "With a strong plot in the vein of High Tension, P2 gives us a chance to further explore the survival aspect of the terror movie." This really is a tense, suspenseful film.The film is almost disgustingly gory, especially with the office chair death.
Roger Ebert liked the film, giving it 3 out of 4 stars, and stated in his review that "although the plot may seem like a formulaic slasher film, P2 is in fact a very well made, atmospheric thriller with gritty yet realistic characters." Ebert is spot on, and coming from someone who is not generally kind to horror films, this praise is well-received..
With the resurgence of the horror/thriller genre in recent years, writers and directors have started to utilize a number of locations and situations that have proved unsettling in real life to be the center point for a film.
P2 proves to be an effective, if not exactly original, thriller that does a good job of keeping the audience on the edge of its seat.Angela (Rachel Nichols) is a workaholic who is trying to get out of the office on Christmas Eve to reach her sister's home, where the family is waiting on her.
When Angela determines that the building is locked, she returns to the parking garage for help, where Thomas subdues her and then chains her to a chair in his office, dresses her in a revealing outfit, and plans to spend a pleasant Christmas eve dinner with her.
Unlike a recent raft of PG-13 horror films, P2 doesn't pretend to not know what some percentage of its audience wants to see.If P2 falls a little bit, it is in the fact that this film is something of a variation on a theme from other recent thrillers, so once it has played most of its cards, you can find yourself generally able to determine where it seems to be heading.
Rachel Nichols performance was really good, and the scenario plays out believably while avoiding a plethora of gender stereotypes, as well as confrontational stereotypes.The characters are interesting and dynamic is great.
From their first interactions, and the interplay between them it's clear how involved the process was in trying to capture those moments.As far as the story goes, it's a pretty standard fair for a suspense thriller type of film.
The film tells the story of Angela, who is working late on Christmas Eve. She is leaving for a get together with family when her car will not start.
What also makes me love this film, is that instead of getting some villain killer in a mask chasing some helpless girl, you get a regular guy, who in times, you feel sorry for, and a woman who is just like an everyday person.
Wes Bentley (Thomas) did a good job in the movie and definitely was a creepy character.
However, psycho security guard Thomas (Wes Bentley) has other ideas: he wants the pretty woman to spend the festive season with him and will do anything to get his way.In my humble opinion, an underground car parkparticularly an almost deserted one late at nightis the perfect setting for a scary movie: full of hard, unforgiving, concrete surfaces (perfect for inflicting pain), dark menacing shadows, and eerie echoes, this unique environment offers horror film-makers maximum scope for scaring the bejeezuz out of an audience (I still shiver thinking about the car park scene in Zach Snyder's Dawn of the Dead).Certainly, P2to my knowledge, the first film to be set entirely within such surroundingsbenefits immensely from its creepy locale's ominous ambiance: with little more than a routine 'woman in peril' scenario for a plot, director Franck Khalfoun relies heavily on his cavernous, subterranean environment to provide atmosphere and scares.
Narrow corridors of light surrounded by blackness; flickering neon bulbs; ever vigilant surveillance cameras; claustrophobic elevators and uncomfortable crawlspaces: every aspect of the car park setting is cleverly used to breathe new life into tired material.Spirited performances from the film's two leads also help to gloss over the film's numerous plot holes and clichés: Bentley is required to over-act as though his life depends on it, and obliges with an impressive, no-holds-barred display of nuttiness (in one hilarious scene, he even gets to pretend he's Elvis!).
Nichols also handles her role well, scoring maximum points for her screaming, running, and ability to look unfeasibly hot in a flimsy dress (worn for no other reason than to permit viewers a chance to ogle her impressive cleavage).Occasionally, the material does get a little TOO predictable for its own good: a couple of moments that attempt to deliver the 'surprise factor' fail spectacularly, and the result of the climactic showdown between Angela and Thomas is telegraphed way too early (close-ups of leaking petrol and a sparking Taser can mean only one thing...).
More Violent & Bloody Than I Thought It Would Be. A business woman has to work late on Christmas Eve, when she finally finishes and heads down to the parking garage, her car won't start.
She asks the parking attendant to help her, but what she doesn't realize is that he is a deranged psychopath who has been watching her and wanting to be with her for quite some time now.I had pretty low expectations for this film, after all it is set in a parking garage.
The lead character, (the security guy) was a terrible terrible actor and played his role out like a whiny girl at times in this movie.
Never in my life have I thought about getting up and leaving a movie, for the fact that I felt like I was going no where and it was an utter waste of time and money.
Angela asks him to open the gate; however, she is unexpectedly attacked by a psychopath, beginning her night of horror trapped in the building.The claustrophobic and tense "P2" is a surprisingly good low-budget movie.
This is pretty basic stuff, a cat 'n mouse horror thriller that supplies enough shocks and tension to work, bustling along at a decent pace with a reasonably likable protagonist and interesting villain.
Angela and Tom are really the only characters in the movie through most of its running time, yet we never get bored or tired of watching them.
The director knows how to frame shots and use lighting to build tension, and there was one scene that I actually jumped at, which is a rarity for a horror film to accomplish these days.
And though not overly gory (there is really only one murder in the entire movie), the death scene is brutal and pretty disturbing.However, despite the positives, which certainly out weight he negatives, there are negatives, mainly how predictable and by-the-book the film is.
There is no big plot twist (an annoying trait that has ruined so many otherwise decent horror flicks); instead the action launches almost straight away and the film focuses on the sinister location to deliver an extremely intense movie.
There are some truly shocking moments that come completely out of the blue, some quite early on in the movie, and the net effect is that you genuinely don't know what's going to happen next.Another success is the cinematography and use of the location; we never leave the parking lot, and to say that the DOP and director get their mileage out of their location is an understatement.It's not without it's flaws, that's for sure, but we don't watch movies like this because we want anything deep.
I loved this flick!Its one helluva thriller....I watched it mainly because I'm a huge Aja fan.After watching the deeply disturbing and incredibly entertaining The Hills Have Eyes and the psychotic Haute Tension I'm convinced that Alexandre Aja is indeed the new master of suspense.Seeing Aja's name in the credits was comforting enough.Franck Khalfoun's debut feature doesn't seem like a debut at all.This guy knows exactly whats he's doing and is good at it.Aja's production prowess is just an icing on the cake.The film boasts of nail biting tension and some over the top performances by the main leads Rachel Nichols and Wes Bentley.From the very first scene till the very last scene,this film just grabs you and never lets go.You'll be left gasping for air by the time you're through.Go watch it now!!!.
I mean I started being a little sceptical about the movie when I saw the trailer, as I always do before venturing to watch any movie, with the exception of animated movies(I watch all, the good or the bad, will make an exception for the new commandments one though), I thought what can you actually do with the story of a woman locked in a parking lot, there is just not much you can squeeze out of that plot.
It's a straight forward horror/thriller movie.One reason people may find this bad is the gore level.
The suspense in here is also high enough because I usually do not get in the edge of my seats that easily.One of the writers in the film is Alexandre Aja. He directed High Tension, which I dreadfully hate and The Hills Have Eyes, which is tons better than High Tension but wasn't a good horror movie.
But 'P2' really has nothing new to offer and the reason why I sat through the whole movie is because I thought Nichols was cute and eventually started to care for her character...even it doesn't take an expert to predict how the film would end, I wanted to know how this young lady struggles to win the battle.
P2 scores with a high octane thriller/horror genre film and parks this film in a nice secure spot.A young lawyer, Angela, leaves the office late on Christmas Eve, only to be terrorized by a trusting security guard in the parking garage with no escape.
P2 is Aja's first script since those films, and I'm sorry to say that it's nowhere near as solid of an effort.The plot line is very simple: as she's leaving her office on Christmas Eve, Angela (our "heroine", played by Rachel Nichols), finds that her car won't start, so she calls a cab.
Unfortunately, the movie fails to deliver an original story and instead, beginning with the middle of second act, begins to rely solely on overused clichés and scenes that are laughably bad (such as the one where Angela's trapped in an elevator - I won't go into details).At first, I was interested by Thomas's character, because unlike we find in the recent slew of torture porn films and the like, this is one psychopath that just wants a friend, and is not interested in torturing or raping his "victim".
Angela (Rachel Nichols) is working late at her employer's office building on Christmas Eve, and when she attempts to depart for a visit with her family for the holiday, her automobile will not start, thereby apparently trapping her in a virtually deserted and dark parking garage (P-2).
It was co-written by the French masterminds behind "High Tension" and the excellent remake of "The Hills Have Eyes," but aside from first-time director Franck Khalfoun's blatant stylistic steals from Alexandre Aja, this couldn't be much further from a "thrill ride." The setting (a multi-level underground parking garage in New York on Christmas Eve) is practically bursting with potential for some suspenseful, scary setpieces, but the script is contented to paint-by-numbers (a drunken groping co-worker is brutalized; a guard dog chases our handcuffed heroine; an elevator is (sigh) filled with water) as it lumbers from incident to incident with diminishing interest (even the finale is a pathetic whimper).
I'm going to use the cliché reviewer line, "When I went into this movie, I wasn't expecting a lot." LOL.It looked like a decent horror/thriller so I gave it a try.
I was surprised when I watched P2, I had been recommended it by a friend who was a big fan of Wes Bentley, she knew I was a horror buff and thought I'd get a kick out of it, I'd put it off for years because it always kept escaping my mind whenever I thought of a movie to watch, and then I ran across it in the bargain bin at my local DVD store and I finally picked it up, and gee am I glad I did.This movie blew me away, it's horror like no other, smart, well acted, original and so full of tension that you can almost cut it with a knife.
Rachel Nichols plays a young business woman who is stuck at work on Christmas eve and in trying to hurry out for the day finds her car to not be working, she seeks help from the seemingly harmless and friendly building security guard, played expertly by Wes Bentley, and from there on the horror begins.
This gal ain't one to sit back and just take it though, she begins to fight back, and mighty well I might add, this movie will have you hooked right up until the end.It's a shame that this movie failed at it's time of release because it's so much better than the usual crappy horror film you see at the cineplex, Wes Bentley is a great actor and he does a great job of terrifying the viewer as he becomes more and more unhinged, and Rachel Nichols is also excellent as the lead character, it's good to see a female fight back in a horror film and actually be convinced by it, I'm definitely going to be watching more movies which she is acting in, she's terrific.The setting of a parking lot is very well played, something a bit different, at first I though there's only so much they can do in a parking lot but they make use of it extremely well.
Sure, it takes place on Christmas Eve, but no one in the right mind is going to call this the next "A Christmas Story." "P2" is a creepy, often frightening horror movie.
The film is an atmospheric thriller that, like the best horror movies, uses light and shadow to its advantage.
Unless you like being scared, don't watch this movie.The acting isn't the most noteworthy part of the film, although it works for the film's purposes.
The acting of Wes Bentley and Rachel Nichols was far better than you'll find in many horror/thriller/suspense movies.
The suspense never builds, I wasn't scared once, there was absolutely nothing original, and the next time I'm in a parking garage I probably wont even think of this movie.
The story of "P2" is fairly simple:a businesswoman named Angela is trapped in an underground parking garage with a crazed parking deck security guard.He abducts Angela,changes her clothes,puts lipstick on her and chains her to a table so she'll share Christmas dinner with him and his dog Rocky.After particularly brutal murder of her co-worker Tom the girl manages to escape.Tom is insistent and wants to be Angela's friend.Angela just wants to escape from the psycho.The bloody battle of wills begin...Pretty exciting and occasionally very gory film with Wes Bentley as almost constantly talking psycho.Rachel Nichols is more believable.There are some truly intense scenes of violence and stalking,but you've see all the elements of "P2" before for example check out two early 90's thrillers "Trapped" and "Lower Level"-they are pretty similar to "P2".8 out of 10..
This film is suitable for people with parkade phobia the film is a little predictable piece of horror but it works pretty well as a suspenseful film, it had some failures in delivering startling effects but even so it had fine performances and a pretty good amount of gory violence several moments where I was on the edge of my seat I feel as though the movie was probably rushed when it was made.
Angela (Rachel Nichols) is a businesswoman who has the supreme bad luck of drawing the fondness of Thomas (Wes Bentley), a psychopathic delusional security guard who locks her in a parking garage during Christmas.
Make no mistake this film won't set the world on fire & it's not nearly as good as Aja's "Haute Tension", but I could think of worse flicks to spend a dark, rainy night watching.My Grade: B- DVD Extras: 3 featurettes (A New Level of Fear: The Making of P2, Tension Nouveau: Presenting Franck Khalfoun, & Designing terror); theatrical trailer, and trailer for "Never Back Down".
This is a different and refreshing kind of Christmas movie written by the promising horror expert Alexandre Aja and filmed by his young partner in crime Franck Khalfoun that I might look forward to watch again next year around the same time of the year..
I recommend this movie to everyone, whether you like horror films or not.
Angela (Nicole Nichols) is a over-working business woman, who's about to leave her office to spend time with her family during Christmas Eve. But when she was about to leave, she finds himself locked up in a parking garage and her car won't start.
Since Thomas knows the parking lot too well.Directed by Franck Khalfoun made an entertaining suspense-thriller with flashes of dark humour and horror.
it wasn't the worst film I have seen by a very long way but would have expected a lot better considering the co writer, just felt like one of these horror movies churned out by Hollywood to make a quick buck.
As far as suspense horror films work it's pretty good.
This was a pretty decent horror/slasher movie,, i was actually rooting for the bad guy "Wes" to get rid of this chick,, the thing is this chick ain't as stupid as most of these dumb girls in these flicks, the film takes place in a parking garage with 4 levels..
This Is not a Horror movie, but a Very Very Good Film in its own.