Last year, between the two of us, we watched an average of 317 movies.
This year our goal is to top that by watching at least one a day.
And as an extra special torture, we've decided to write about all of them.

07 July 2008

P2, dir. Franck Khalfoun (2007)

NIKKI says:
Girl gets chased around parking garage for 90 minutes. I'm pretty much ready to give that ago based solely on those few words. This one also has the name Alexandre Aja attached, he of the horrendous High Tension and the not-so-awful Hills Have Eyes remake. So, good premise plus reasonable pedigree equals potentially good horror/thriller.

Well, it was okay. There were some major scares, and the lead actress, Rachel Nichols, was very good. I felt for her all the way through. She pulled off the woman-in-distress thing really well. I jumped when she stabbed Wes Bentley with a fork, and then when hit him over the head, and in the end when she gets her final grrl-power revenge on him.

But when she wasn't on screen, I didn't so much care. Wes Bentley's garage attendant psycho was straight out of a Psych 101 textbook. "You're not a slut," he tells Rachel, over and over. And tells her that he's "doing all this for her". But we don't really know what he expects to happen when the sun comes up and its a brand new day. He's left bloody corpses about, destroyed an elevator, turned his office into a crime scene -- did he think he and Rachel were just going to live in the garage forever? Was he planning to kill her?

It's a bit up in the air. And Bentley's screaming signify his mental state was so over the top it became distracting. I like psychos who quietly go about their psycho-ness. This guy was screaming so loud you could barely understand what he was saying. I expected more tension, more thrills. But really, it was just a matter of holding on 'til the 75 mark when you knew it was time for Rachel to fight back and kick ass, which she does very well.

Some good horror scenes involving a flooded elevator, a wall-ramming, and some axe-wielding. But bad horror scenes involving a second wall-ramming, the old fingernail snapping backwards, and the brutal slaughter of a dog.

All in all... 2.5/5