CNET Networks Entertainment GameSpot | GameFAQs | SportsGamer | Metacritic | MP3.com | TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Film

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

85 Alexandra
xx All of Us
53 Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
57 Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, The
40 America the Beautiful
66 American Teen
74 Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer
63 Appaloosa
xx Ashes of Time Redux
65 August Evening
xx Bachna Ae Haseeno
62 Baghead
81 Ballast
55 Battle in Seattle
59 Beautiful Losers
xx Beer for My Horses
47 Before the Rains
80 Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
xx Billy: The Early Years
63 Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
56 Bottle Shock
75 Boy A
55 Bra Boys
xx Breakfast with Scot
61 Brick Lane
64 Brideshead Revisited
61 Bustin' Down the Door
xx Call and Response
49 Children of Huang Shi, The
47 Choke
xx Choose Connor
xx Christmas on Mars: A Fantastical Film Freakout Featuring the Flaming Lips
54 CSNY: Déjà Vu
41 Cthulhu
64 Duchess, The
85 Edge of Heaven, The
66 Elegy
33 Elite Squad
52 Elsa & Fred
80 Encounters at the End of the World
26 Everybody Wants to Be Italian
64 Fall, The
28 Fireproof
86 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
65 Flow: For Love of Water
37 Forever Strong
39 Forgiveness
82 Frozen River
73 Girl Cut in Two, A
62 Girls Rock!
xx Goal II: Living the Dream
73 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
57 Good Dick
54 Hamlet 2
xx Happy-Go-Lucky
25 Hell Ride
44 Henry Poole is Here
31 Hounddog
53 Humboldt County
72 I Served the King of England
71 I.O.U.S. A
40 Igor
64 In Search of a Midnight Kiss
46 Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer
67 Jellyfish
xx Just Buried
62 Kabluey
63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
78 Last Mistress, The
52 Last Stop for Paul
70 Love Songs
xx Lower Learning
63 Man Named Pearl, A
89 Man on Wire
62 Mister Foe
86 Momma's Man
74 Mongol
80 Moving Midway
46 My Mexican Shivah
xx Nights and Weekends
73 Obscene
80 Order of Myths, The
67 Patti Smith: Dream of Life
xx Phoebe in Wonderland
55 Ping Pong Playa
77 Pool, The
72 Priceless
82 Rachel Getting Married
61 Red
55 Religulous
71 Roman de gare
78 Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
51 Savage Grace
58 Save Me
72 Secret, A
45 Shoot on Sight
57 Sixty Six
55 Sukiyaki Western Django
16 Surfer, Dude
82 Tell No One
56 Then She Found Me
63 Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A
71 To the Limit
57 Towelhead
72 Transsiberian
83 Trouble the Water
83 U2 3D
84 Up the Yangtze
52 Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
79 Visitor, The
61 Wackness, The
xx Whaledreamers
54 What We Do Is Secret
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?
67 XXY
55 Year of the Fish
39 Young People F**king
75 Young@Heart

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

P2
Summit Entertainment

P2 reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 37 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
5.5 out of 10
based on 15 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 17 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for strong violence/gore, terror and language

Starring Rachel Nichols, Wes Bentley, Simon Reynolds, Grace Lynn Kung, and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee

It's Christmas Eve: a time for curling up by the fire with family and friends; a day when even the most voracious corporate climbers generally head home by dinnertime. But not Angela. She's the last one left at the office, determined to close one more deal before the holiday. The long hours she keeps will have an impact, but not the kind she's been hoping for. When she gets down to the parking garage, she discovers her car won't start. The timing couldn't be worse; she's already late for Christmas Eve dinner with her family, the garage is deserted, and her cell phone doesn't get a signal underground. But then a friendly security guard comes along and offers to help. He flirtatiously invites her to stay and share a small Christmas dinner he's preparing in the parking office, but she laughs it off. Before she knows what's hit her, she's been knocked unconscious. When she wakes up, she's tied to a chair in the security guard's office. As it turns out, his dinner invitation was not optional--and it's going to involve a lot more than a meal. If Angela wants to live to see Christmas morning, she must find a way to escape from level P2 of the parking garage. (Summit Entertainment)


GENRE(S): Horror  |  Suspense/Thriller  
WRITTEN BY: Alexandre Aja
Franck Khalfoun
Gregory Levasseur
 
DIRECTED BY: Franck Khalfoun  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: April 8, 2008 
Theatrical: November 9, 2007 
RUNNING TIME: 98 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

70
Village Voice Chuck Wilson
If it weren't for two excessively violent deaths, P2 could be termed a refreshingly old-fashioned thriller, one dependent on hairbreadth escapes and the pluck of its heroine.
Read Full Review
70
Washington Post Mike Mayo
If in the end P2 contains few surprises, it's still a nice piece of polished escapism.
Read Full Review
63
ReelViews James Berardinelli
P2 doesn't crash and burn, but its finale is more generic than what the effective first hour leads us to hope for.
Read Full Review
60
The New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis
Swift and stealthy P2 is a canny exploitation of one of the urban woman’s greatest fears: the after-hours parking garage. Throw in a car that won’t start, a creepy security guard and a filmmaking team with perfect synchronicity, and the result is a minimalist nightmare.
Read Full Review
58
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
The minor pleasures of P2 lie in the simple effectiveness of the sleekly unshowy direction and the clean, unadorned script, which pares away extraneous distractions like motivation and complicated back stories to get on with the mechanics of tension and the obligatory jumps and startles (which stand in for genuine scares).
Read Full Review
50
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
No two ways about it: The screenplay is derivative. But the location adds a little novelty to the standard-issue running and screaming.
Read Full Review
50
San Francisco Chronicle Walter Addiego
Standard-issue slasher pic.
Read Full Review
50
The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
In the sadism-for-thrills sweepstakes, P2 is no "Saw," but it will get young women to clutch their dates for a week or so in theaters before fading to DVD shelves.
Read Full Review
40
Variety John Anderson
What "Psycho" did for the shower, P2 tries very hard to do for the parking garage, spending most of its time below ground, and below an adequate level of convincing dread.
Read Full Review
40
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Ultimately, though, and despite an enormously creepy turn from Bentley (American Beauty), the story has nowhere else to go but into the standard (albeit judiciously-used) stalk-and-slash territory.
Read Full Review
25
Chicago Tribune Jessica Reaves
The lighting is appropriately dim, the music is reasonably clever, and they get in a few nice scares in the beginning. But as the movie wears on and Angela’s desperation grows, any glimmer of fun seeps away. And we’re left watching the same old grim game of cat and mouse.
Read Full Review
25
New York Post Kyle Smith
This is one of those thrillers where the person on-screen is often the only person in the theater who can't guess what'll happen next. Lots of laughable moments provide camp value, though, and Bentley ("American Beauty") makes for a charismatic creep.
Read Full Review
25
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jason McBride
A pointless thriller.
Read Full Review
16
Baltimore Sun Robert Abele
Has the feeling of something done many times before.
Read Full Review
0
Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Amid the dumbness and disgust for paying customers, the movie does manage to cough up something I didn't expect: a performance so terrible you can't quite believe it's happening: Bentley's.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 5.5 (out of 10) based on 17 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jay H. gave it a5:
Not much new in this film, you have seen it all before in one shape or form. The acting is okay and it does have some suspenseful moments but overall it's bland. Wes Bentley tries and does well as the psychopath.

Frasier M. gave it an8:
This movie was quite good. It's a real challenge to find a good horror movie anymore. There is either too much gore and/or too bad acting and/or not enough thrills and chills. This movie made me jump a few times, but the reason I didn't give it a full ten points is because of the ending. Happy endings are starting to get annoying, and plus like you wouldn't see a girl in a sleeveless blouse and not stop to ask her if something was wrong. But other than that, great movie. Good acting, good gore level (enough to keep you covering your eyes every now and then, but not enough to go to the bathroom to hurl), and good plot. I don't know about you, but I've never seen a movie where a woman is being stalked in a parking garage!

Chad S. gave it a5:
"P2" is a superior genre picture, a sort of "Red Eye" in a parking garage(in one scene, Thomas(Wes Bentley) gets red eye, literally), that's informed by Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill Vol. 1" when Angela(Rachel Nichols) goes all Uma on Thomas' psycho ass. Because of the times, "P2" resorts to the requisite gore to satisfy the core audience, which prevents this sometimes effective thriller from crossing over to a non-teen, non-bloodlust lovin' demographic. At its best, "P2" is a poor, poor, poor man's "Silence of the Lambs". It also makes a salient point about hierarchies in the workplace. Angela is willing to put up with sexual harassment from her boss, but not from a mere parking attendant. The leads, especially Wes "Anything Tobe Maguire Can Do, I Can Do Better" Bentley, do an exceptional job with their respective thankless roles, which should lead to better acting gigs in the future.

Nick F. gave it a2:
Way to ruin Christmas, P2.

Craig A. gave it an8:
If you can't enjoy a great thriller like this, I feel sorry for you. Both this movie, and Hostel 2 have been compared to Saw movies and called inferior to them by so called professional critics! Critics suck so bad! A bit of gore and people crap themselves.

Enrique gave it a1:
I have seen this stuff too many times already and much better. This thriller is just a total fiasco.

Critic Proof Garbage gave it a1:
Absolute bottom-feeding dreck that recycles everything you've seen before, over and over again, to the point of sheer boredom. However, it must be said that Rachel Nichols has an astounding set of titties.

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: Fantasy Football | Miley Cyrus | MLB | iPhone 3G | GPS | Recipes | Shwayze | NFL

About CNET Networks | Jobs | Advertise

© 2008 CNET Networks, Inc., a CBS Company. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use