Noteworthy Heroines of Horror is a recurring segment on Wicked Horror where we shine the spotlight on a female character from the annals of horror history that has made a significant contribution to the genre. The characters we select may not be the obvious final girls that regularly grace top ten lists, but their contributions to the genre are meaningful and worthy of note.
Sometimes a good horror film is all about location, location, location. A lonely parking garage late at night can be terrifying for anyone with a vivid imagination, and in 2007, producer Alexandre Aja and his Hills Have Eyes collaborator Franck Khalfoun explored this idea with the film P2. In it, a lonely parking attendant terrorizes a woman he’s had his eye on when he locks her in the underground garage of her office building. Wes Bentley takes on the role of charming psychopath Tom, while Rachel Nichols gets put through the wringer as Angela and proves herself a Noteworthy Heroine of Horror.
In their first scene together as captor and captive, Angela does not immediately freak out and start begging Tom for her life. She is quiet and remains as calm as possible, smartly assessing her situation and trying everything in her power to stage an escape. First she tries the tough approach and demands that Tom unchain her from the table. He just ignores this, so she switches to the polite approach, and then tries lying and manipulation.
Despite all his grandstanding about not wanting to hurt Angela and only seeking to “help” her, Tom’s ultimate motive for what he does is purely selfish. He claims to be angry at her co-worker Jim because Tom saw him aggressively make a move on her in the elevator. Jim is even killed for this perceived crime. But Tom’s treatment of Angela is perhaps even more sexually demeaning. When he kidnaps her, Angela is in her corporate attire, with her hair done up in a tight bun. After she wakes up from being drugged, Tom has redressed her into a short, cleavage-revealing white dress, red lipstick, and put her hair down. Angela later sees a video that Tom took which shows him touching her body while she was passed out. But learning what he has done while she was unconscious only fuels her fire to beat him.
Angela doesn’t seem like someone all that admirable when the audience first meets her in P2. But her inner strength and determination comes out in a most inspiring way. She never gives in and she never gives up, even when things seem impossible for her. We are proud to, in turn, bestow upon her the Noteworthy Heroine of Horror title.