The trailer for P2, a little thriller of containment starring Wes Bentley and Rachel Nichols (aka the hot babysitter from The Amityville Horror) slated to hit theaters November 9, has dropped, and though it's complete boilerplate, I confess a little tinge of arch-browed curiosity, mainly from trying to figure out if the movie has any sort of twist or not.



Co-written by Gregory Levasseur and producer Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes), the film marks the directorial debut of collaborator Franck Khalfoun. Set on Christmas Eve, it stars Nichols as Angela Bridges, an ambitious young white collar-type who's stuck working late before she leaves for her family’s holiday party. When she gets down to the parking garage, she discovers that her car won't start. The garage is deserted, and her cell phone doesn't get a signal underground. When Thomas (Bentley), a friendly security guard, comes along and offers to help, Angela nervously accepts his gesture of goodwill. When he invites her to stay and share a small Christmas dinner, she initially laughs it off, not knowing that Thomas has been watching her closely for months, and that his dinner invitation is not optional.

Though I really want to go with the heaving-bosom picture of Nichols in a negligee and handcuffs, I'll save that one for a later date, maybe pegged to the film's release. Speaking of which, has there been any young actor of recent memory who's traded away his heat quite like Bentley? In the span of just several years, he's gone from a spoof-worthy co-star (in Scary Movie) of the Oscar-nominated American Beauty to almost completely anonymous. His post-Beauty choices — The Claim, Soul Survivors, Four Feathers and The Miracle Match — represent one heck of a craptacular parlay. I'm sure his agents had to both put a gun to his head and twist some studio arms to get him cast in Ghost Rider, but how did that work out, exactly? Does anyone actually remember him in the movie? Actually, maybe I'm not giving the handlers enough credit... maybe that was the point all along.