It's Christmas Eve, when even the most voracious corporate climbers generally head home by dinner time. But not ANGELA (Rachael Nichols). She's the last one left at the office, determined to close one more deal before the holiday. The long hours she keeps will have an impact, but not the kind she's been hoping for.
Stalker in a parking garage. You've got to give the makers of P2 credit: They've tapped a universal source of anxiety and stretched it out into a feature-length film. Underneath a Manhattan skyscraper, chic businesswoman Angela (Rachel Nichols) is knocking off for the Christmas holiday. Everybody else has cleared out of the garage--everybody but freaky-friendly attendant Tom (Wes Bentley), and his little dog too. Before long, Tom makes it clear that he'd like to have Angela for holiday dinner, whatever that might mean. Our heroine must summon all her resources, and the challenge of a low-cut dinner gown, to fight back. P2 (no, it's not the sequel to P) at least allows Angela a measure of common sense, as she actually thinks of some logical ways to fight back, and director Franck Khalfoun (working from an idea by Haute Tension guys Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur) does indeed get the most out of the parking garage location. But the movie's at a loss to make these two characters interesting in any way, even at the Coyote vs. Roadrunner level. Tom's little quirks, like miming a dance to Elvis Presley's "Blue Christmas," feel like a desperate attempt to add flavor to an otherwise standard-issue creepo. Bentley (best known for American Beauty) does have the face of an obsessive, and Nichols has the face (and did we mention the cleavage?) of a movie star, so they're not hard to believe. But most of the time this movie is stuck on the wrong floor. --Robert Horton
Theatrical release date
2007
DVD release date
2008-04-08
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