First released in 2007, P2 tells the story of Angela Bridges (Rachel Nichols), a young businesswoman who just wants to get off work and spend Christmas Eve with her family. Instead, she finds herself trapped in an underground parking garage and stalked by an unhinged security guard named Thomas (Wes Bentley).
P2 feels as if it was designed in a lab to exploit every fear I have.
First off, I’m terrified of confined places. This is a film that moves from one confined spot to another. It’s not just that Angela is trapped in a parking garage and the only person who has the key is determined to keep her there. Over the course of the night, she also finds herself trapped in Thomas’s office, an elevator, and the trunk of her car. P2 captures the suffocating feel of claustrophobia, the sense that an already confined space is slowly closing in on you. The more Angela struggles, the less space she seems to have.
I’ve always been scared of loud, barking dogs, especially the kind that jump out of nowhere and start growling at you as if you’re the bait in some game you didn’t even realize you were playing. Thomas has a dog named Rocky. Both Thomas and Rocky are relentless in their pursuit of Angela. Thomas wants to take her back to his office so he can force her to comply with his desires. Rocky, on the other hand, just wants to tear her apart.
I’ve always been scared of drowning, and, believe it or not, this film actually contains a scene in which Angela is forced to face that same fear. How does one drown in a parking garage? Let’s just say that Thomas knows every button to push and every lever to turn. Angela may work in the building and park in the garage, but for the most part she’s only a visitor. The garage is Thomas’s whole world.
I’ve always been scared that if I found myself in a really bad situation, I wouldn’t be able to depend on anyone to help. In P2, Thomas hides his homicidal nature behind his uniform and his title. When two policemen show up to check out the garage, they don’t even notice Angela’s broken phone lying on the ground. Even when Angela does manage to call 911, she’s answered not by an operator but by an automated system that puts her on hold. If Angela is going to survive, she’s going to have to do it on her own.
The film also captures a much more universal fear: the fear of not having control. Angela has never noticed Thomas before, but Thomas has spent two years obsessing over her and waiting for the day he would be able to drag her back to his office. To Thomas, it makes sense that Angela should spend Christmas with him because she has been on his mind nonstop for years. Angela, meanwhile, wakes up in the office wearing handcuffs and a revealing white dress that Thomas apparently put on her while she was unconscious. This is a film that always makes me wonder how many Thomases are out there. Who knows what’s happening behind the smiling faces of the people we see every day but don’t really know?
P2 works because it captures those universal fears. Yes, the story might be a bit predictable, but most of our fears are predictable too. That doesn’t make them any less scary. Rachel Nichols is sympathetic as Angela, while Wes Bentley is appropriately unhinged as Thomas. Bentley has said that he was struggling with a heroin addiction when he made P2, and he plays Thomas with the self-destructive intensity of an addict who can’t think beyond his next fix. It doesn’t matter to him—or perhaps even occur to him—that there’s no way he can get away with abducting Angela. All that matters is having her at that exact moment. He’s impulsive and unpredictable, and all the more frightening because of it.
P2 was the directorial debut of Franck Khalfoun, who went on to make the surprisingly effective remake Maniac. Unfortunately, his later films haven’t really lived up to the promise of his earlier work, but P2 remains an effective slice of holiday horror.
