The directorial debut of Franck Khalfoun was co-written and co-produced by French genre wunderkind Alexandre Aja, the man behind Haute Tension and the remake of The Hills Have Eyes. While Aja's films stand out as well made and at times quite intense works of suspenseful horror, for whatever reason he wasn't able to work his magic on P2, which turns out to be a pretty poorly written film.

Angela Bridges (Rachel Nichols of the 2005 version of The Amityville Horror) is the last one to leave the Manhattan office building she works at one cold Christmas Eve. She says good night to Karl (Philip Akin), the security guard, and heads downstairs to the parking garage where she finds that her car won't start. Thankfully, Thomas (Wes Bentley of American Beauty), the parking lot attendant is still around. He tries to jump start her car but it won't work so he lets her back into the office lobby where she calls a cab. The can shows up, but she's locked inside and it takes off before she can get out of the building.

Shortly after the cab leaves, Rachel is knocked on the head. She wakes up dressed in a formal gown sitting at a table in front of a Christmas dinner spread. Thomas pours her a glass of wine and she realizes that she's chained to the table. Things are obviously not right here and Angela knows that something is very wrong with her captor and that if she wants to survive the night, she's going to have to find a way to escape.

P2 starts off reasonably well. Anyone who has wound up in a parking garage alone at night knows that they can be a little intimidating. They're dark, you usually can't see what's coming around the corner, and they tend to cast weird shadows. They're not a particularly warm or friendly environment, and they're fairly unpleasant, really. Keeping this in mind, you can see why the producers would want to set their film here, it's a good spot to place a horror movie. Unfortunately, the good set is really all that this picture has going for it.

The biggest problem with the film is the acting. Wes Bentley isn't the least bit intimidating as the psychotic antagonist with a thing for big breasted office employees and Elvis' Christmas music, while Rachel Nichols doesn't exactly set the world on fire as the used and abused victim. We're not given much insight into either one of those cardboard character nor are we really given much of a reason to care about what happens to them. This is particularly reinforced for us when Angela is given a few chances to make an escape and fails time and again. While she obviously doesn't deserve what happens to her, you can't help but wonder why she doesn't just pull the fire alarm...

The picture looks slick enough and there are a couple of mightily impressive gore scenes here and there but really, the suspense in the film is pretty much non-existent. The film isn't scary, it isn't well written, and it isn't well acted. It is, however, dull and unimaginative.

Video:

P2 is given a very solid 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that has been properly flagged for progressive scan players. The bulk of the film takes place in the underground parking garage, not the most colorful setting in the world for a film, but even with most of the film's sets doused in grey, the film looks good. The lights from the Christmas decorations look nice and bright while the interiors of the office building show very nice and lifelike color reproduction. Skin tones are certainly lifelike and accurate and there aren't any problems with mpeg compression artifacts. A bit of mild aliasing and mild edge enhancement shows up but aside from that, this transfer is very strong.