P2 film review

certificate_18

P2

The French directorial team of Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur made a splash in horror cirlces with their 2003 release Haute Tension (inexplicably released in the UK under the title Switchblade Romance). Following its success they were taken under the wing of genre supremo Wes Craven to create the remake of his classic The Hills Have Eyes, and now for their third feature they have handed the directorial reins over to their colleague Franck Khalfoun, while clearly keeping a close eye on proceedings.

Aja and Levasseur (who co-wrote the screenplay) have a thing or two about stalkers. While Haute Tension was an erotically charged and often impressive tale of lesbian desire taken to extremes, P2 sees an oddball underground parking attendant kidnap and mentally torture a successful young executive who works in the skyscraper above him.

The title refers to one of the parking levels and allows the marketeers to come up with the tagline 'a new level in horror'. The trouble is, it's not. The film doesn't really add anything to a genre that at its zenith has something like the superlative Misery - a weirdo captures an object of desire and proceeds to mentally and physically mutilate them.

It does however answer the nagging question of whatever happened to Wes Bentley, the introspective videotaping neighbour from American Beauty. Here he does a perfectly adequate job as the increasingly deranged loon, but the script doesn't really offer him much depth. Opposite him, in what is largely a two-hander, Rachel Nichols is also effective as the traumatized but intelligent victim.

It's the kind of film that half way through makes you ask yourself 'why am I watching this?' as it doesn't really have anything that hasn't been done before. The gore factor is certainly high and it's a first cousin to the lamentable torture porn genre. Overall it would be better suited to a dvd release than the big screen experience.

Paul Hurley