When it happens to you, little seems worse than not being able to find your car in a parking lot or garage. That isn't necessarily due to fearing that someone has stolen it, but rather the feeling of public humiliation stemming from not remembering where you parked the darn thing. It apparently happens enough that the old TV show "Seinfeld" devoted an entire episode to such an occurrence.
Of course, worse things can happen. One's vehicle could be stolen or vandalized, while a dead battery in a deserted lot or garage at night can be quite trying. However, if you throw in an obsessed stalker who renders you unconscious, dresses you in party garb, chains you to a table, and then takes care of the office lech in a unique fashion, then you have every right to complain about having a bad day.
Such is the case for Angela Bridges, the heroine of "P2," a suspense/thriller so-named for the parking garage level where her car ends up disabled and through which she spends some of her time trying to stay clear of the film's villain, a parking garage security guard by the name of Thomas.
In short, writer/director Franck Khalfoun and co-writers Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur have taken the usual "damsel in a confined space distress" and transplanted that to an otherwise deserted Manhattan parking garage on Christmas Eve. The result is a standard cat and mouse thriller where -- as such films always have it -- our stressed out protagonist eventually transforms from terrified villain to a kick-butt warrior, or at least one who manages to do some table turning.
Accordingly, one can now add this flick to a growing list of such films ranging from classic oldies such as "Wait Until Dark" to more contemporary ones including the likes of "Red Eye" and "Panic Room." Unfortunately, and despite a few decent sequences and effective jump scenes, the filmmakers don't really turn this into anything terribly memorable.
They certainly don't do much with the premise of being trapped inside a locked garage, although that locale in general doesn't provide a great deal of material with which to work. That might not have been as big of a deal had the characters been more compelling or interesting, but the film is also a letdown on that front.
Since this is, for all intent purposes, just a two-character flick, the performances and writing need to be stronger, cleverer and hopefully more innovative than we've previously seen in similar offerings. Increasingly typecast as the calm but creepy guy, Wes Bentley can't do much with the security guard-cum-obsessed stalker, especially in the second half when any level of subtlety is thrown out the window in favor of increasingly unhinged histrionics.
Rachel Nichols is mediocre as the distressed damsel, although as much or more of that is a result of little to no character information as compared to a flat performance (notwithstanding the screaming, running and looking terrified parts of the role that are handled adequately).
Aside from the obligatory, cathartically violent conclusion and one brief bit of comic relief (when the stalker asks his victim, "Are you trying to get me fired?"), there's no "fun" adversarial relationship between the two, and gore (particularly stemming from a car, a man tied to a rolling office chair, and a wall) supplants any sort of creative storytelling devices to keep us interested, at least beyond any sort of base, instinctual response to the old hunter and hunted bit.
With nowhere to go and little to do or say that's particularly interesting or novel, the film gets lost in its own underground trappings, never managing to take viewers somewhere they haven't already been. While it has a few decent moments, "P2" is otherwise stalled in park rather than cinematic drive. It rates as a 4 out of 10.
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