P2

Order a Psychotic! from Amazon

Alexandre Aja is a definite talent you want to look out for when it comes to horrors, and frankly, the onion which guides and remains is always ready to inspect both the worst and the best that horror has to offer. Aja gained immediate, well deserved recognition by his quite solid slasher effort Haute Tension back in 2003, while his screenplay of a 2006 remake for the ancient horror classic The Hills Have Eyes produced a quite decent, inventive output, as well.

Now he teams up with friend/actor Franck Khalfoun to offer a co-op screenplay, while responsibilities of the direction are fully relying on the aforementioned personificator, now making his debut as a director. Featuring but two focal characters to draw the stable outlines of a hunter-hunted traumarun, P2 reveals an intact, in-your-face psychodrama driven by very clear understanding of what this style of storytelling might operate supersmoothly, efficiently of.

Rachel Nichols is your heroine, and Christmas Eve is your mood setting. A broken car engine is Rachel's ticket to Hell, and the security guard of the parking lot is the Gatekeeper, more than ready to let the girl through. Wes Bentley, personificator of Tom, the security guard has a relative resemblance to great actor Joaquin Phoenix in my opinion, especially when they are offering the highly frustrated, yet profoundly dangerous personas that most actors either fail miserably at revealing, or they end up being quite convincing at that. You see, this is a borderline game, haha!

Our synopsis is quite straightforward: it is but a matter of fifteen minutes until we could safely conclude that Tom has developed textbook borderline personality disorder while killing the time in his security station without human contact. On this here Christmas Eve, he probably realizes
that he couldn't bear the stale loneliness the parking lot suffocates him with - thus he quickly decides to make an effective captive of Angela, - Rachel Nichols - satisfying consensus social/moral/respect values as it would be totally acceptable in spite of his own now-uncontrollable urge to share his inner self with another.

I got bad news and I got worse news though, unfortunately. The bad news is that by the time in question, Tom's personality is deformed. The worse news is: Tom's personality is like: maaaassively deformed, trust me. He is clearly beyond the capacity to get a glimpse on how his actions are influencing reality in radically negative directions. He is someone who is extremely hard, more precisely: almost impossible to relate to when showing his True, sorrowfully, dangerously damaged self.



Such a damaged inner reality probably should be treated and approached by extremely cautious measures, as one can never be sure what rules/factors it is inventing to operate itself by. Wes Bentley offers this inner conflict masterfully in the flick: Tom knows how to make people believe he is sober, sane and harmless, he can play the game, he can pretend - more precisely: he COULD play the game and COULD pretend. Not anymore. Not when the girl he is so painfully attracted to is so close to him. He couldn't bear knowing she has a good time elsewhere and he is not around to share in it.

someone who you so painfully like, having all fun with other at night

Stakes therefore are rising, as this here, probably quite psychotic train of thought develops in the man: he demands the intimacy he is longing for. He does utilize passive violence to attach the girl to himself, to force her to interact with him - such is the thirst of Tom for human contact. Angela of course quickly realizes that the man is beyond accountability and poses radical danger, thus a hunter-hunted game unfolds the moment the girl is capable to make a run for it, just to end up in captivity again.

The factual/emotional reactions of Tom towards Angela's persistent escape attempts are imbuing the security guard with even more frightening traits. "I would never hurt you. You know I won't hurt you. Could you just trust me, please? Let's be friends, OK?" Stuff to offer you the shivers, no doubt, as there are quite sanely - hah! - projected emotional layers are at sorrowful, sinister workings here. The utilization and narrative presentation of noted behavior patterns closely related to borderline personality disorder serves the flick extremely well, indeed. Tom is very good at victimizing himself, provoking emotional conflicts just to create an excuse and occasion later to thoroughly spill his feelings on the other, and/or to offer his most sincere apology. And then again. And the again. I hope I am not offending anyone who suffers from the disease in real life - my point is simply this: P2 seems to rely heavily on the symptoms of borderline personality disorder, and takes the legit narrative liberty to show them through a magnifying glass, I'd say.



Therefore Tom's character is a much more deep, damaged spiritual entity than your usual slasher-prowler. I think it is safe to say that the convincing acting performance of Bentley and the remnants of the sanity his character is yet able to witness just to degrade further all deliver a baddie figurine that sticks out of the recent horror mainstream quite evidently, quite considerably.

Questions arise on how this nice psychodrama outline is capable to unfold into a hunter-hunted horror flick you could easily enjoy yourself with, and, fortunately, the buildup stands all trials keenly and steadily. P2 introduces quite a few memorable peek sequences and creative deaths - man, I LUVD the Chaired Molester vs Car and Wall matchup -, and does an inventive job of utilizing the mere environment to summon and offer different flavors of suspense creation. I tend to think that no hollow moments or redundant vibrations are present in this here flick - there is a lot to sink your teeth into if you are to grab a nice, intact, intense piece of popular horror to your belly, which I would urge you to with the eager recommendation of this stable, fresh effort.

If you enjoyed this here article, check out my comic: Planetseed
If you are to circulate magnificently pleasant vibrations: Buy me Beer