Gregory Levasseur Tagged Articles at Cinematical

There's no lasting money in the beauty of plastic bags. American Beauty was Wes Bentley's lone gem among a handful of low-buzz releases. However, as an expert of the creepy stare, it's no surprise that he's diving into the darker films like the upcoming P2.

Under the eye of first-time director Franck Khalfoun, the creators of High Tension (Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur) are turning their attention to the creep factor of parking garages. The main premise: a successful business woman (Rachel Nichols) spurns the advances of a security guard (Bentley). Not happy with her refusal, Bentley beats her unconscious and holds her captive. Nichols must not only escape his eerie stare, but also the scary parking garage.

The locale makes sense. I've been in the Toronto parking garage they filmed in, and it is quite creepy. Eerie stillness, the buzz of fluorescent lights, and strange, echoing noises are all mainstays of horror/suspense. That being said, I wonder if they can keep the tension in a relatively small and empty place. There is only so much running and hiding one girl can do. Or, will it really matter? Nichols obviously had to strip down to her camisol to grab an axe and hide amongst the pillars of P2, so it the plot goes slow, moviegoers will still have her sweaty, heaving bosom. Yes, the picture at the right is from the released still, which you can see in its full glory at Jo Blo's Arrow in the Head.

Because Americans have fallen totally in love with movies in which lots of violence -- sexual and otherwise -- is visited upon nubile young women, Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur (the minds behind Haute Tension and the The Hills Have Eyes remake) are striking while the iron is hot. Their newest production is called P2 (as opposed to K2, a confusion that will only intensify when you see the word "climber" in the following quote), and will tell the story of "a corporate climber who gets stuck working late on Christmas Eve and finds herself the target of an unhinged security guard. With no help in sight, the woman must overcome physical and psychological challenges to survive." A sign that I will not be seeing this movie is that just reading the summary makes me feel a little sick with fear -- yes, the thought of psycho cops and security guards in isolated settings scares the crap out of me. That said, however, the bit about survival is hopeful -- maybe the woman will kick the guy's ass before he gets a chance to slash her face and fondle her boobs. Unlikely, I realize, but still.

The movie will star Wes Bentley, who has been under a rock (made of bad, little-seen movies) since American Beauty, and Rachel Nichols, and will mark the directorial debut of Hills Have Eyes editor Franck Khalfoun. Shooting begins next month.

One would think that with a name like Wes Craven - his real name, by the way - that a life as a director of horror films would be the man's inescapable fate from the very start. While the 66-year-old Cleveland-born Renaissance man has created some of the most revered films of the modern genre like A Nightmare On Elm Street and the breakout Scream trilogy, there is more to him than that. He studied writing, psychology, philosophy and literature at Wheaton College and Johns Hopkins University, taught college, and did not even start working in the film industry until the age of 31 as a sound editor.

It was in 1971, though, when his path would intersect with that of another future horror legend - Friday the 13th creator Sean S. Cunningham. Their meeting first resulted in the largely forgotten Together, footnoted only because it starred a 19-year-old woman named Marilyn Briggs (who consequently met brothers Artie and Jim Mitchell, who rechristened her Marilyn Chambers and made her a porn icon in Behind The Green Door). However, the collaboration made fellow tyro Cunningham want to work with Craven again. The next year saw the release of the Cunningham-produced, Craven-directed The Last House On The Left, a remake of Swedish titan Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring, believe it or not, a raw and grimy low-budget effort about a pair of murdering rapists who unknowingly hole-up in the house of the parents of one of their victims. The film became a cult favorite and launched Craven's career in movies.

Craven's second film, the savage and effective 1977 survival tale, The Hills Have Eyes, was about a family who, while traversing the desert, encounters a group of inbred maniacs who prey on these seemingly helpless castaways. Nearly three decades later comes the first remake of Craven's own work, with the new version helmed by French it-director Alexandre Aja (High Tension), released in the U.S. on March 10. Craven, who produced the film for Fox's boutique arm Fox Searchlight, was cool enough to call me at home for an impromptu chat. After I insulted his parentage and suggested a scenario in which he couple with a Cheerio (thinking I was being pranked by my friend Eric), I apologized and basked in fanboy glory for the remaining 22 minutes of our phoner.