First of all, when I say P2 is a "movie", make no mistake: the only actual resemblance this bag of strangled kittens has in com-mon with an actual movie is that it unspools through a projector and images are displayed on a 70mm screen. Other than that, this is the type of cinematic experience which a human being could only tolerate or enjoy to any degree if they were sloshed out of their minds from consuming a jug of some type of moonshine, preferably Old Rummy. P2 is the type of film which would have received a well-deserved thrashing on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It's the type of "movie" the damned are forced to watch in hell. With all the unintentional laughs it offers up on a platter(and my audience howled throughout, especially toward the end), the film's distributor--Summit Entertainment--should have promoted it as a comedy.

 
     The "story" starts off with Angela Bridges(Rachel Nichols), a young and ambitious Manhattanite(and New York is once again played by its imposter sibling Canada) who is working late on Christmas Eve. Angela performs an unspecified job in an unspeci-fied company where she moves millions of dollars between the various accounts of her clients, yet somehow is so low on the totem pole that she can't leave work before finishing her boss' projects and still suffers sexual harassment issues from the office perv(Saw IV's Simon Reynolds).

 
     Angela is due to drive over the bridge to Jersey(which would probably have been doubled by Russia) to meet her folks and siblings for a dinner party in which we're to assume she is to play Santa, since she reassures her mom over the phone that she didn't forget the suit...which we do see her carrying. After saying goodnight to security guard Carl--otherwise known as Completely Uncredited Old Black Actor(seriously, he and an African-American woman are among the only uncredited people in the cast, and there are only ten people in the whole movie!)--Angela heads down to parking level P2(alleged "director" and "co-writer" Franck Khalfoun, making his debut in both areas here, never lets us for-get what parking level the "story" takes place on) where she finds that her car won't start. She looks around but can't find Carl, then heads to the security office and runs into security guard Thomas(Wes Bentley), who attempts to jump-start her car but is unsuccessful.

 
     Angela then manages to contact a cab company, only to find the building doors are already locked and she can't get outside. While heading down to P2 to find Thomas, the lights in the garage all begin to shut off, and she stumbles around in the dark, using only the light from her cell-phone...which must contain a fragment from a white dwarf star inside, since it's brighter than a flashlight running on 15 "D" batteries...until Thomas surprises her from behind and knocks her out with chloroform.

 
     When Angela awakes, she is in Thomas' security office with a shackle around her ankle and wearing nothing but her slip(see photo, right). Thomas is lonely, you see, and has observed Angela through the intimate lenses of his security cameras for months, and has decided he's in love with her(or just wants to have Christmas dinner and be her friend. Bafflingly, his motiva-tions change between the beginning of the film and its end). And now begins the real sexual harassment...only it's not Angela that's the victim, it's the actress playing her, Rachel Nichols.

 
     While I can appreciate a film which has a good-looking actress running around in next-to-nothing as much as the next guy(Chris-tina Ricci's similar state of undress being pretty much the only saving grace of Black Snake Moan), P2 takes it to excess, even for low-grade garbage like this. So-called "writers" Alexandre Aja, Gregory Levasseur(the "writing" team on Haute Tension and The Hills Have Eyes) and Khalfoun take every opportunity possible to have poor Ms. Nichols go bouncy-bouncy-boing across the screen or manage to get her slip into various states of wetness. The first time she manages to escape Thomas' clutches and runs through the semi-darkened lot, a woman in my screening audience couldn't help but let out an astonished "Damn!"

 
     There's a scene later on where Angela swipes Thomas' secur-ity keycards and uses them to access an elevator. Thomas tosses a hose into the shaft(don't even go there!) and begins to flood the elevator, naturally soaking Nichols' slip and of course, her breasts. At this point, Khalfoun should have just tossed Nichols a bar of soap and let her lather up while he shot it in slow motion. Even on the official website, nearly every shot of the actress has her wearing only the infamous slip, and only one of the film stills has her in actual clothing! I know up-and-coming actors need whatever jobs come their way, but you can't tell me this isn't seven different kinds of humiliation. I used to think Blaxploitation was bad? Look out! Here comes Breastploitation!

 
     Oh, and the movie itself sucks, by the way.

 
     There are ever-increasing levels of stupidity...sort of like the nine levels of Dante's Inferno, only these Vices of the Dumb are thrust upon the living audience. For starters, Thomas has a Rottweiler whom he alternately calls "Lucky" or "Rocky", depend-ing on whether the continuity editor was awake on whichever day they were shooting(the dog's character is actually credited as "Rocky"). At one point, having evaded Thomas in the parking lot, Angela must sneak back into the security office and climb over a desk to avoid being chomped on by a shackled Lucky/Rocky in order to reach her purse and the cell phone within. Why she would want to retrieve the cell phone--which it's been demonstrat-ed several times will not work in the P2 level--when she could use the perfectly good and working landline phone she has to crawl over to reach her purse is beyond me. Man, those Vices of the Dumb really are painful.

 
     Amazingly, surprisingly, tragically...somewhere between his intense breakout performance in American Beauty and this drivel, Wes Bentley fell into the Fourth Circle of Stupid and has somehow completely forgotten how to act! His performance in P2 ranks right up there with the most voraciously bad acting jobs you'd find in any typical Ed Wood film. His facial expression forever stuck on "creepy", Bentley alternates between yelling at Angela, begging her to come out of hiding, or whining that he wants to be friends. He's menacing only to the degree that an irate clerk at Burger King might be when you change your order from Whopper to plain ol' hamburger at the payment window. This is the type of perform-ance that you could sit around one day watching with the grand-kids and go, "Yep...that's exactly the point where Wes blew his own career's brains out!"

     P2 also misses no opportunity to exploit every single cliche of the "stalker" genre. Is Uncredited Black Guy Carl dead, and will his body be revealed to Angela in a somewhat grisly way? Yep! Will Thomas attempt to prove his love for Angela by murdering the perv who wronged her? Check! Will Angela eventually be chased by Rocky, Lucky, or whatever the hell its name is, and have to make a stand to survive? Got your back on that one! There are only four or five different ways Angela can manage to physically hurt Thomas in a "shocking" and grisly manner in order to get away from him in the film's climax. Which one will it be? Man, I should've contacted a bookie in Vegas on this one...I'd be able to retire on my winnings.

     The two-person drama is a very hard trick to pull off. It requires solid direction, a full-on dedication to telling a riveting story, and both actors must be skilled veterans who know how to adequately and humbly allow give-and-take within their performance interac-tion, in order to best benefit the story. P2 is soundly lacking in every one of these areas. My advice: If you really want to see a film with intense and earnest two-person characterization, back away quickly from this lower-level nonsense and watch 1991's Closet Land with Alan Rickman and Madeleine Stowe instead.

 
     Save yourselves from the Realm of the Dumb.