2007 could, I think, be called the Year of the Tortureporno. The genesis of the fad can be traced to a handful of foreign horror films and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake circa 2003. Saw cemented it in 2004 and a couple of notably disreputable entries trickled out over the next couple of years - the pair of dreadfully unpleasant Saw sequels and Eli Roth's Hostel probably the most so. In 2007, though, the floodgates opened. A fourth entry saw the Saw movies making the leap from trilogy to franchise, Hostel saw its own follow-up, two French torture films, Frontier(s) and Inside, made waves, Captivity generated massive controversy with its ad campaign and the year was capped off with today's subject, a tortureporn Christmas movie of all things, P2.
Indeed, P2 showcases a positive laundry list of trappings of this most unsavoury of subgenres: a relentless string of contrivances to keep salvation perpetually just out of reach of the protagonist(s, torture films are less given to having a designated Final Girl), a resolutely unthreatening villain, scenes of violence that focus far less on the gore and more on the suffering of the people involved, and a vein of sour misanthropy that takes weeks to shake after viewing. It's not true of all movies in the genre, but almost all of them also share the following trait with P2 as well: they are profoundly fucking awful movies.
The only thing that really sets P2 apart from so many of its contemporaries is the involvement of noted French filmmaker Alexandre Aja, who first broke on to the horror scene in a big way in 2003's neo-slasher Haute Tension. Written by Aja himself with regular collaborator Gregory Levasseur and directed by first-timer Franck Khalfoun, who had previously appeared in front of the camera in Haute Tension, the grubby fingerprints of the man behind that film and the Hills Have Eyes remake were all over this one.
P2 is delightfully mercenary in establishing its goals. Over the course of not more than fifteen minutes we're introduced to Angela (Rachel Nichols), a career woman working late one Christmas Eve who ends up stranded in her workplace's underground parking lot after her car refuses to start and the rest of her co-workers have headed home. Friendly night guard Thomas (Wes Bentley) lets her up to the lobby to wait for a cab before she finds out the front doors are sealed and at this point you could almost believe you were watching a particularly generic holiday comedy save for a couple of flimsy false scares. On her way back through the parking lot Angela is knocked out by Thomas and awakes chained to a table, facing him. The movie is barely a tenth over and that's all the plot and characterisation we'll be getting. From then on it's a slow crawl to the end credits as Angela sees herself stuck in torture setpiece after torture setpiece.
Alexandre Aja's involvement meant one good thing, at least - the director brought with him Maxime Alexandre, his regular cinematographer, and the thing looks a million bucks. Draped in moody shadows and contrasted with harsh neon lighting and vivid splashes of colour (the colour-coded pillars of the parking lot look particularly striking, as well as frequent uses of the colour red), the camera works its hardest to really capture the ominous feeling of an underground carpark late at night even as a generic, overmixed and wholly inappropriate score by the outstandingly douchily-named tomandandy does its best to ruin the mood.
That's about all the praise I have to sing, though, because the movie that plays out within that gorgeous and evocative setting is rancid. I already mentioned the plot contrivances but I'm going to mention them again because the movie is literally built out of them. Everything from the general brunt of the plot to the tiniest little gruesome detail is contrived from some hellish place where screenwriting goes to die. Contrivance in horror is nothing new, but it adds up to vey little of anything here. I never cared that Angela was in jeopardy or pain because Angela barely existed, a non-character hidden behind an icy exterior, a lousy performance and a whole lot of tears. Even this could have crippled but not ruined the film if its villain wasn't every bit her equal. I was constantly torn between wondering if Thomas was supposed to be scary or hilarious, and Bentley's inability to do anything other than feign awkward conversation or scream shrilly did little to make it any clearer. By the time he proved himself a clown with a big Elvis song-n-dance number (no, really), I'd stopped caring because P2 clearly never gave a shit to begin with.
I'm not even the right person to be talking about this, though. This movie isn't about Angela, or Thomas. This is a film about watching people tear their own fingernails off. This is a film about seeing a dobermann stabbed to death with a tire iron. It's not even about the execution of those ideas - indeed, i've never lied about my love of a nice gooey gore effect, but there's not even a whole lot of that on display here. It's about wallowing in the idea of such acts, and praising the creators for... for what? For the willingness to Go There? I'm not buying it. I know that Alexandre Aja can make a delightfully amoral splatterfest that is full of energy and liveliness; I have seen Piranha 3D. Now there was a film that didn't make me feel like I had to shower afterwards.
