P2

What should have been a crappy thriller is actually saved by unexpectedly solid acting. This is the kind of film a younger Jodie Foster might have been in, in between her more prominent roles. It's not "The Accused", it's not even "Panic Room", but it might be "Red Eye".

A young woman working late on Christmas Eve has car trouble and winds up trapped in her building's underground garage with the increasingly unhinged attendant. That's it, that's the entire plot.

Where this movie breaks away from the pack is the slow and deliberate way the villain slowly metamorphosizes from a bumbling nice-seeming guy to an absolute psycho, and the performances, which require a surprising amount of range and depth for a film like this. Both characters somehow manage to convey some depth and variety of emotion; when the villain tells her, "I like you. I would never hurt you," you almost believe him—somehow they found an actor who could pull it off. And they're not afraid of long slow sequences in the middle where the action is mostly psychological, the escalating tension as the dynamic between the characters slowly goes off the rails, but hasn't yet turned brutally physical.

There are a few short moments of unwarranted explicit gore. There's only like 3 of them, and they pass very quickly, but unfortunately they mar the more understated vibe of the first two acts, and are the only brief moments that this film dips into the kind of cheap exploitation that I wnt in expecting the entire movie to be.

Looking it up afterwards, I was surprised to find that this was from the production team behind the execrable 2002 French slasher pic "High Tension", which I absolutely hated, although this had a new director. But, ah, according to Wikipedia, this was filmed in Toronto. So, somehow, that subtle Canadian tendency to avoid making complete crap strikes again.

I'm also surprised to see it's pretty much universally panned. It has 35% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And yet people love "High Tension". I don't understand humans.

Roger Ebert, notably, gave it three out of four stars and said, "although the plot may seem like a formulaic slasher film, P2 is in fact a very well made, atmospheric thriller with gritty yet realistic characters", continuing my streak of largely agreeing with Roger Ebert on a lot of movies other people didn't like. He got "Antichrist" right, too. (Cripes, how have I not reviewed "Antichrist"?)

Also, looking afterwards, the female lead went on to star in the sci fi TV series "Continuum", which I also apparently didn't review but I recall liking ok.

All else being the same, if this had been a Jodie Foster film, I would have known going in what the baseline was, and would have called it "watchable". But, having expected absolute garbage going in, the pleasant surprise elevates it from "watchable" to "je nais se qouis".

I just looked and am pleased to see that Roger Ebert gave "High Tension" only one star.