Movie review: P2 (2007) seen on cable tv as well as streaming services

Thriller: not recommended for young children: intense violence and gory scenes

The movie follows an attractive young business woman named Angela, (played by Rachel Nichols.) After she is stuck working on Christmas Eve, she finds herself with car trouble while on the way to a family Christmas party. She seeks out help from a security guard named Thomas, (played by Wes Bentley.) After he is unsuccessful in giving her a boost, she opts to call a taxi despite Thomas saying it might be hard to get one as it is Christmas Eve. When the taxi arrives, she finds herself locked in the building with no one to open the door. She rushes back into the parking garage to try and get someone to open the door. As this is happening, the taxi leaves without her and she is stuck wandering around the underground parking structure. Suddenly the lights inexplicably go out leaving Angela completely in the dark with her only able to use her cell phone as a source of light. Suddenly, she is ambushed by Thomas from behind where she drops all of her belongings on the ground.

She awakens in his office sometime later having had her clothes taken off and replaced with a white dress. Appearing in a Santa suit, Thomas offers to have Christmas dinner with her. As she tries to escape the office, she realized her foot has been chained to Thomas’s desk after she manages him in the back with a fork.

He eventually forces her to call her family to lie about being sick as an excuse for her not to attend the party as he stands behind her to make sure she actually goes through with the lie. From there, he offers to take her for a ride in his car to another section of the parking garage where a male coworker named Jim, (played by Simon Reynolds,) is tied to an office chair with his mouth bound by duct tape. Earlier in the film, he is shown apologizing to Angela for having made a move on her during the Christmas party while drunk, (this is not shown in the movie,) for which she had forgiven him.

Thomas had witnessed this pass made at Angela. As his “Christmas present” to her, he offers her his flashlight in order to assault him in retaliation for the pass he made at her. When she refuses, he opts to do it himself and dismisses her reasoning for not doing it as having feelings for him. He gets out of the car and taunts him before swinging the flashlight multiple times on his skull busting him wide open as Angela looked on horrified at what she saw. He then returns to the car and drives right up to the chair. With Jim sitting at the front of the car, (still tied to the chair,) Thomas drives the car forward sandwiching Jim between the car and a nearby wall exposing parts of his stomach in the process. Thomas then backed the car up as Angela began to cry because of what happened and then drove the car forward into Jim’s face squishing it in the process and leaving Jim’s blood and guts to be seen plastered on the wall with his lifeless body leaning against it.

This was only the beginning of what would be a horrific night for Angela as she made numerous attempts to escape throughout and even had a chance to tell police when they arrived responding to a noise complaint but she couldn’t talk to them as she found herself locked in the trunk of a car with Thomas playing “Santa Baby” over the loud speakers to drown out the noise of her screaming as police drove by.

The ending of the movie shows Angela handcuff Thomas to the steering wheel of a car and use his taser to ignite a flame by putting it in a nearby puddle. This causes a fire to start and the car explodes with Thomas still handcuffed to the steering wheel killing him. The movie officially ends with Angela obtaining Thomas’s keys while still in the white dress to unlock the gate and escape by early Christmas morning.

As many people would believe, this is not your stereotypical Christmas movie. When people think of Christmas movies, they think of happiness and joyful movie, not movies where a young woman gets trapped in a parking garage by a crazy lunatic security guard who let’s be honest, just wants a piece of tail for Christmas. As a matter of fact, despite this being labelled as a Christmas movie, there aren’t really that many Christmas like elements in it other than Thomas wearing a Santa suit and playing numerous Christmas songs throughout, (in one scene, he is seen lip syncing, “Blue Christmas” by Elvis Presley while Angela uses the distraction to destroy all of the cameras,) and the mention early in the film of it being Christmas Eve.

Contrary to what people may believe I personally think is the reason why Thomas held Angela hostage, (most would think I believe this was for a date,) I actually believe Thomas had a point in doing what he did. As he explains early in the film to Angela, he is a loner and is always alone. He has no family or friends to spend the holidays with. As far as I’m concerned, it’s an unwritten rule that nobody should be alone on Christmas, no matter who you are. So while I believe that Thomas is right is right for wanting to spend the holidays with someone as he has nobody else, he definitely went about obtaining Angela’s friendship the wrong way.

Most people would believe that I thought Thomas wanted Angela to date him, (and to be fair, this is what I thought when I first viewed this movie.) However, as I remember what the unwritten rule of Christmas is, I would think that Thomas may not have wanted sex but just a friend.

I would say another way they could have done this movie is to have Angela, (in exchange for Thomas obviously letting her go as a result,) invite Thomas to the Christmas party she was supposed to attend. Obviously, he was dressed for the occasion as he had a Santa suit on. This is another route they could have gone but I guess they didn’t want to put a possible romantic angle in the film as members of the family who also attended the party would believe the two are dating.

Movie rating: 8.5 out of 10.

The reason for this rating is because I am a man and even though Angela was held against her will the entire movie, she was hot.

Though my mother has never seen this movie, if she did she would likely believe that I liked the movie because I thought Angela was hot.