REVIEW: P2 (2007)

This review is dedicated to the parking lot at the Citrus Club of Orlando Florida, which caused me so many grievances.

P2 is a movie that for some reason, people seem to think isn’t that bad. I mean, really? Have I stepped into some kind of alternate universe or something?

Director: Franck Khalfoun

Starring: Wes Bentley, Rachel Nichols

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804516/

I couldn't fit it in in the information box above, but this was produced and written by Alexandre Aja, who also gave us Mirrors. Dude, you made an awesome flick with High Tension. How do you continue giving us this low-rate slop?! It's seriously sad. TRY HARDER.

The movie begins with a cheap jump scare that actually flashes forward and shows us a random moment from an hour into the film. Is there a point to it? Nooooooo. Then we see our main character is a stuck-up blonde lady named Angela who works in some unspecified office doing some unspecified thing that I’m sure is important enough to ditch her family for. Will this isolated and friendless aspect of her character be elaborated on or made important later? Noooooooo.

Then we get those tired scenes in every lame horror movie where we’re introduced to the characters who will die later on for no story-purpose other than because they’re going to die later on. Isn’t that wonderful? In one corner, we’ve got generic businessman-guy in a suit who hit on the main girl while she was drunk! He comes into her office to apologize, but she’s rude and dismissive to him, so he leaves. Endeared to our main character yet? I am. In the other corner, we’ve got the Helpful Black Guy, a character type that peaked 25 years before this movie came out when Stanley Kubrick made The Shining.

And oh, hey, it’s that idiot from American Beauty! He’s playing the movie’s killer and delivers an over the top performance that isn’t funny enough to really leave an impression, nor scary enough to make any real tension either.

So she’s about to leave but then her car doesn’t work, so American Beauty-guy has to help her out, whines about how she isn’t thankful enough for stuff, and even asks her to come to eat dinner with him. Thinking his career went downhill when he appeared in Ghost Rider, Angela says no like any sane person would. She calls a taxi, but misses it and can’t get outside in the span of 2 seconds, so the taxi drives away! Excellent service, I say! I bet that guy gets all the tips.

And of course, like any good office building, there are no emergency escapes and no other ways out. This is all just a really contrived and silly set-up for her to go back down to the garage and get kidnapped by American Beauty-guy, whose real name is Thomas. You know, the funniest thing about this character to me is that it’s pretty much the exact same character as American Beauty, only a decade later. Like if the kid from that movie grew up and was just as screwed up as he was back then, only now with the burdens of a layman’s job on him to make him even crazier.

Frankly I think he's past his prime. After his big 'plastic bag in the wind' speech he pretty much went downhill...

She wakes up in a skimpy dress that pretty much reveals the only reason anyone would ever willingly watch this, her boobs. They’re constantly emphasized to look as big and round as possible, so you know the filmmakers had no actual ideas; they just resorted to the lowest common denominator. If you can’t have an interesting story or scary moments, just show some tits! That’s really about all you ever need to see in this movie. Everything else is just window-dressing.

The real star of the movie - her cleavage!

And why on Earth does Thomas dress up as Santa Clause when she first wakes up? Hur hur hur, he’s just that wacky I guess!

So they bore us some more with an overlong scene of him forcing her to sit down at dinner with him while he makes idle chitchat that’s about as endearing as a jackhammer to the head. Then he handcuffs her and takes her outside to murder that guy who hit on her while drunk at the Christmas party. She won’t do it, so he just goes and beats him up himself, and then rams him into the wall with his car a few times! And Angela is afraid of this guy? By golly I can’t see why! By the way, I love this dialogue here:

Thomas: You did fuck him, didn’t you? LIAR! (He says this right after he brutally murders a man…something doesn’t add up there…it’s like if Bernie Madoff got mad at someone for not giving him the correct change at the grocery store.)

Oh yeah, and he also screams at her uncontrollably and it becomes clear that he’s not mentally stable at all. I do love the extensive background checks this building does on its parking garage employees. I mean, the guy’s about as subtle as a glowing neon sign saying I’M TOTALLY NUTS!!! I really doubt he’s never had any kind of serious blemishes on his record before now. It’s just impossible.

And this whole thing is just contrived as hell. This plan could have gone wrong any number of ways. She could have actually left early to go see her family on Christmas eve. There could have been someone else working late. Someone could have come to visit her unexpectedly. Yeah, I know he apparently stalked her for months, but even then, it’s not like this guy is all-omniscient or anything. He couldn’t possibly have known for sure that he would get every little aspect of this plan working correctly. He's like the MacGuyver of contrived stalker plans.

Then we travel through horror cliche country! Like this dumb scene where of course she drops the phone right out of her reach, and then scrapes off a fingernail right after, resulting in some icky body-gore…that’s two dumb clichés in one! Seriously, why does every horror movie these days have scenes like these? It’s just dull writing and you know what’s going to happen anyway. She’s going to pick off her fingernail and it’s going to zoom in on the blood and the audience will be grossed out, and it’ll all be so boring I’d rather bash my head against a wall. And the cell phone thing? Seriously, you’re going with that? That’s so old it might as well be put in a museum of horror movie clichés.

And to add insult to injury, she tries calling out and screaming for help, but then an old crazy woman who happens to be walking by at the same time starts imitating her, ensuring nobody will listen. Gee, movie. Why don’t you just have somebody try and come save her, and then have a plane fall from the sky on top of them, right as they’re about to reach her? THAT’S ABOUT THE ONLY GODDAMN THING YOU DON’T DO!

So Thomas chases her around some more and she locks herself in an elevator. He responds to this quite normally, by filling it with water from a hose to try and drown her. He also throws the dead body of the helpful black security guard we saw for 2 seconds earlier in the movie into the elevator. And I guess we’re supposed to care? Yeah, so glad they didn’t show us his death! Great way to make the audience invested! Christ. This film constantly builds up scenes that could potentially be good, but keeps ruining them with poor set-ups, stupid dialogue and confused direction.

Somebody's all wet over this whole kidnapping thing...OK, horrible joke, but really what else do I have to work with?

Oh, and I just love this scene!

More of Thomas dancing to Elvis songs while watching Angela on the TV screens, please! Note the sarcasm. It’s just like the famous scenes of the Silence of the Lambs killer dancing in drag…except here it leaves no impact and is mostly just silly.

So she gets out and finds an ax, which she gets out of its glass case and starts smashing cameras with it. Great! Finally something smart! Maybe we’ll actually get some real conflict now that Angela is actually able to fight back! So what are you gonna do, movie? What’ll it be? This is your final chance.

Angela goes into the guard station where he was before, and doesn’t find him there. Instead, she finds a TV playing a videotape of him fondling her while she was unconscious from the beginning of the movie. Why? Did he just feel like jerking off to it and then decided to leave in the middle? Did he know she would come in and be distracted by it? Well, anyway, being the smart person that she is, Angela will ignore this and keep her guard up…

…OR she could smash the TV, scream, and then see some police coming in and get distracted! Thomas then comes in and tazes her until she faints. So she had an ax and STILL couldn’t do anything worthwhile? Come on! It was so easy! All she had to do was find him, hit him with the damn thing, steal his keys and go. This is just way, way too stupid, even for this movie! But hey, anything for a 90 minute runtime, right?!

SHE HAD AN AX! HOW HARD COULD IT BE?!? Aaaaaaarrrrrrrgggghhhh!

And then we get some dumb, long and drawn-out scenes of the cops moseying around and doing nothing – but they do have suspicious looks on their faces, so there is that! This movie has more padding than a pillow factory.

Angela kills Thomas’s dog as it tries to attack her, which prompts this golden line of dialogue:  “How could you kill a poor, defenseless animal? YOU’RE REALLY STARTING TO PISS ME OFF!” I know Thomas is crazy and everything, but this is just second-grade level writing. I seriously can’t tell whether this is supposed to be humorous or not. If it is, well shame on you for not making the rest of the movie as funny, Aja. If it isn't, well I can't say I'm surprised.

So then they chase each other around in cars for a while, they crash and Angela handcuffs Thomas to the car, intending to leave him there…until he calls her ‘cunt,’ and then she turns around and lights him on fire, killing him. Yup, after everything he did to her, she was ready to just let him live and possibly come back for an even worse sequel. But calling her a bad name? HOW RUDE! She walks out into an (admittedly nice) shot of snowy New York and we see exactly where this whole journey has led us…a blank, cold, foggy miasma of nothingness.

This was a hard one to review because there simply isn’t much to say about it. It’s not terribly made and the acting, while not great, isn’t exactly anything I can make fun of, either. The reason this movie doesn’t work is because it’s a poor premise in general, and is executed poorly. They had a limited number of things they could do with the shut-in setting and the very small number of characters, and so they ended up filling the movie with padding and scenes that just plod along with only the most minimal kind of impact. It’s filled with every poor cliché the genre ever had, scrapes the bottom of the barrel for even the most pandering jump scares out there and contains mostly nothing worth talking about. So yeah, next time you’re thinking of watching a horror movie…don’t pick this one. In fact, if this is your only option, just go read a book or something instead.

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Review: Mirrors (2008)

Over the last 6 or 7 months, I’ve done a lot of these reviews. You know, the kind where I point out why these bad movies are bad, ignoring the fact that I could probably be doing a million better things. So for this one, I’m not going to get angry at the film. It’s not worth my time or energy. I’m going to review this film, but I’m definitely not going to let out my rage on it. It’s unhealthy, and would only lead to more anger at other things in my life. In fact, if I get angry at all at this film, you have every right to call me out on it and strip me of my right to review anything else, because God knows the gimmick’s getting old. Real old. So. With that said, what is the movie I’m looking at today, anyway?

Director: Alexandre Aja

Starring: Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0790686/

Oh, snap.

Well, this is Mirrors, everybody. This movie was directed by Alexandre Aja, who once directed such brutal, gory films as High Tension, but has of late become associated with slop like P2 and this movie, which I have to admit is noticeably worse. I mean, how sad is that? To go from such a violent, intense and even downright horrific film to a half-assed, dime-a-dozen supernatural thriller like this one is just pathetic beyond belief. But it’s real, and unfortunately we’re going to take a look at it today.

The movie begins with a guy running away from the producers of the movie, I assume, screaming for them not to kill him. I guess he must have tried to leave without their permission. Geez, film productions are getting really hardcore these days! Anyway, something funny happens with the mirror he runs into that causes the guy to slit his own throat with a broken piece of the mirror. They should have gotten better insurance on those things.

Then we’re introduced to our one-dimensional caricature of a main character, played unconvincingly by Kiefer Sutherland. Who could probably be doing way better things with his time, like making more 24 episodes. Apparently he’s playing an ex-cop with alcohol issues who got kicked out of his own house by his wife. Give a round of applause for the guy with the most pathetic life, guys! And now he’s working as a night security guard at a burnt down department store? Check off another on the List of Ways to Tell Your Life Sucks.

The mirror don't lie.

So he gets walked through the whole place with this old guy telling him everything that the producers couldn’t fit on the back of the DVD box. Department store burnt down, tons of people died, everyone’s 20% off coupons are no longer valid there, yadda yadda yadda. Skip it. Sutherland stops by his wife’s place and they get into a fight, followed by a spontaneous make out session up against the closed door. Yeah. Because when you come to visit your wife who kicked you out of the house because you drank too much and possibly beat and/or abused her in some way, she ALWAYS makes out with you like it’s a crappy late-night sitcom.

Also, check out the acting range on Sutherland! He goes from a boring, standard Clint Eastwood impersonation that is common for main characters in these movies (without any of the charisma Eastwood had) to a dull shouting attempt at sounding ANGRY!!! Did I put enough exclamation points on there to emphasize all the ANGER he puts into his mindless screaming? No, seriously; those are his only two emotions throughout the entire film. I’m dead serious.

So Sutherland starts to patrol the, uh, vacated department store, and he sees some pretty freaky shit. Why are there dead, burning people in the mirrors but not there in real life? Why did Sutherland suddenly freak out and feel like he was covered in fire? Well, any normal, logical solution would suggest that he’s probably doing crack on the side, too. It makes sense with his character anyway. But we have a shoddily made and poorly written supernatural horror movie plot to shit out here! So instead it’s suggested that – get this – there’s something in the mirrors that is making people kill themselves when they look into them! He even finds that guy’s ID from the beginning of the movie conveniently lying on the floor where he’s patrolling.

"Hmm...if I look closely enough at this mirror, I can see my credibility vanishing quicker and quicker..."

This leads to some GREAT DETECTIVE WORK as he bravely marches into his wife’s workplace (she’s very conveniently a practicing doctor at a big hospital) and demands that she let him see the dead body of the guy from the movie’s intro, with the added threat of making her watch him try to act some more if she doesn’t. Fearing this horrible fate, she quickly opens up the freezer and lets Sutherland see the body, which comes to life in the metal reflection and scares him. He spazzes out and doesn’t really find out much new aside from a name, Esseker.

Oh, and would you BELIEVE me if I told you that his wife thinks he’s crazy? No? Okay. I don’t even have to say it then.

Sutherland proceeds to continue working at the broken down old store even though any sane person would have quit somewhere in between the first demented crack-dream and the second one. Meanwhile, he sees more nightmareish hallucinations at his sister’s apartment where he’s staying right now that look kind of like something Tim Burton would come up with when he’s pissed off at the world. When his sister shows some concern about his well being, he responds by screaming loudly at her. Because…that’s all he’s got.

LISTEN TO ME!!!

His sister is fleshed out herself, though, as we see that she does, in fact, have boobs. You know, because they just have to show a nude/bathing scene of even the most under-developed characters before they kill them off. Speaking of killing them off, let’s take a spin on the Kill-O-Meter and see what it turns up. Hmm…what random, gruesome way can we kill this character even though not having her die really wouldn’t have much effect on the plot? How about having her rip her own jaw clean out of her face? That’ll do it! What a wonderfully pointless death.

I don't think your makeover is working out too well for you, honey.

I mean, I guess it’s a cool, gruesome horror movie death, but there’s no other death in the movie like it, so it just feels out of place. I am watching the uncut version though…which means that they did it just to get people incentive to buy the uncut version instead of the theater version. Still one of the better parts of the film, I guess. See, I can say nice things about these movies!

After that Sutherland is thrown into depression over his sister’s death, and becomes more convinced than ever that it was the mirrors behind it the whole time. Somehow he also finds out that shooting one of them does nothing, as the mirror kind of regenerates itself and shows no signs of damage. That’s…so stupid I don’t even know where to begin. How can you possibly be serious with that, movie? What, do the mirrors have built in combat reflexes? Are they made for military use? It’s just so ludicrous. But I’m not getting mad. I’m cool. Just downright chilled, friends.

Realizing that they can attack anyone, anywhere, Sutherland goes to his wife’s house and starts painting over all the mirrors. His wife comes home, calls him crazy, and he tries to show her that he’s right by shooting at the mirror with the gun in his pocket. Of course, it doesn’t work, so she just calls him crazy some more and he goes on his way. He finds out some important information about the backstory behind this whole thing – there’s a lot of shit about this twelve year old mental patient who was actually possessed by demons, but given treatment for schizophrenia involving a room full of mirrors. Which somehow made the mirrors possessed? And there was a fire, people died, but the little girl actually did not die, despite her medical record saying she did…it’s a huge mess, and even writing it all out is confusing the fuck out of me. It’s convoluted as hell. How does this add up to mirrors killing your family if you don’t bring them what they want, again? I think I lost track somewhere.

Oh, I forgot. The mental institution, after it burnt down, was turned into the department store that Sutherland currently works at! I do love those department stores that used to be mental institutions…there’s just something charming about them!

So the mother won’t believe any of Sutherland’s crazy rambling until one morning when she sees her son’s reflection not doing the same thing he is actually doing. Then all the sudden, bam! She believes every word of it. They paint over all the mirrors and close the blinds in the whole house, and then Sutherland goes off on a detective hunt to find Esseker, who he eventually finds living as a nun in a church. She’s such a good, pious Christian that she doesn’t help Sutherland at all even though he begs her and tells her his whole family is going to die otherwise.

Wait. Something doesn’t seem quite right there.

Meanwhile Sutherland’s family is running away from their own reflections in the house. Wow. That did sound retarded. I feel less intelligent even writing it.

AHH! Our reflections are TERRIFYING! God; worst horror movie plot since Darkness Falls.

And while THAT’S going on, Sutherland just says, fuck it, and points a gun at Esseker’s head, forcing her to come with him. I hope he plans to come back and do a confessional about this! They go back to the burnt down mental hospital-slash-department store and she tells him what to do. I have to admit that the special effects that follow are pretty good, as they show the mirrors in the building exploding and crumbling down to the floor in a pretty decent display. The family is safe, Sutherland won, and it’s over. Right. RIGHT?

No, we still have a big monster that comes out of nowhere for Sutherland to fight. This part makes me laugh because it’s just so telling of what this movie really is. They spend all this time building up suspense and making the film one of those slow-burners that takes a while to really kick up the scares, but then at the end they just throw in a big, ugly monster, as subtle as a dump truck driving through your window. It’s flat out ridiculous and getting angry at this would be a waste of my time.

So he kills the monster, but then realizes he’s inside the mirror somehow. What? Huh? Why? I don’t know. This movie sucks!

I mean this is just unbelievably lame. It’s lame on levels you didn’t even know existed beforehand. The writing is painful; the story is a mix of stupid, dull and confusing, and Kiefer Sutherland…just, really? Really, this is the performance you’re giving us? I’ve seen cardboard cutouts give less wooden performances! Shame on you for even directing this at all, Mr. Aja! Shame on you!

Okay, okay, sorry. Almost let my anger get the best of me there. But I think I’ve come out mostly unscathed. I might be on the path to a better, more fulfilling review career here. In fact, I think I can handle another movie just like I did here. I bet you anything I can get through another horrible movie without losing my temper at it. So, what’s next on my list, anyway?

Fuck!

None of these pictures are mine. They were all taken by other people and I take no credit for any of them.