The Power (2021)

directed by Corinna Faith

UK

92 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I had really been looking forward to this since I saw it was coming out soon, and it didn't disappoint. The cinematography is so stylish and everything else about it so well-executed to boot that it makes me appreciate Shudder so much for what it's doing for horror. I just love that we have a dedicated streaming service for horror that regularly introduces incredibly solid original horror films like this one. For a genre that gets maligned in the popular eye so often, having a small corner of the film streaming market specifically for creating and distributing horror movies that stack up to the best of them is very important.

Set in the dismal, industrialized background of mid-70s Britain during the widespread power cuts that posed a challenge for many hospitals, The Power follows a rookie young nurse on her first harrowing night on the job in a spooky pediatrics ward. A little bit of this reminded me of Saint Maud if Maud had not been somewhat of a nutcase: the nurse has some personal trauma that her work doesn't allow her to forget. The comparisons between those two films ends there, though, and probably I should not even have brought it up. But anyway, for a long time this all seems pretty bog-standard; I love a good "long dark night of the soul, literally" type of film where a character or cast of characters are trapped in a dank shadowy place and have to survive the night, and this one is done really well. The hospital feels labyrinthine even though we only get to see a few rooms of it, just because we see the map that shows all of its corridors laid out like a spider's web and because once the set is outside the illuminating glow of a character's lantern or torchlight, it might as well be a bottomless cavern. This is definitely one for those scared of the dark- or maybe not, depending on how much you enjoy being creeped out.

So like I said, it proceeds along those lines for a while and everything gradually gets worse and worse for our poor protagonist. It becomes clear she has no one to trust at this new job and is as much in danger of getting eaten alive by her judgmental coworkers as by whatever is haunting the hospital (and her). But there's a change, eventually, that is precipitated by lead actress Rose Williams revealing that she has acting chops far, far beyond just the timid, naïve nurse we first believe her character to be. She has a possession scene partway through the movie where she just throws her all into it in the tradition of Isabelle Adjani and any woman who has ever writhed in the throes of ennui onscreen. Williams' performance as first a terrified young woman alone, then someone reckoning with the scars of the past, and eventually the marriage of the two is probably one of the best things about this movie. I don't believe she's ever been in horror before but she definitely has a talent for it.

The scares themselves are also paced really well and spread apart so that you're always on edge, never anticipating where the next thing will pop out at you from. It does stoop to using jump scares pretty often, and a lot of the creepy things are of that type where some weird image is just thrust in your face all of a sudden with a big scare chord accompanying it- not my favorite kind of thing from a technical standpoint, because I think startling the audience is a lot different from actually scaring them, but I am also somewhat of a jump scare apologist because, for all the arguments against them and their cheapness, it is really, really fun to scream out loud in a movie theater. Horror that's only present in the implication of a backstory won't do that for you.

And the most important thing about this movie is that it does have backstory. It has a meaning that resonated with me really strongly. I feel like there is a long tradition, possibly made most recognizable by Fairuza Balk in The Craft, of scenes in horror films where a woman's frustration at being continually sidelined and robbed of power manifests in her physically levitating off the ground. That small trope (if we can even call it a trope) is done very well here. Without the element of catharsis, this would have still been a good movie; it's got the style and the lasting creepiness to stand on alone, but there's a deeper message here about the disease that is poverty and the silencing of women in favor of an unbreakable status quo held sacred by men. It is not in-your-face about these things (though there is nothing wrong with being in-your-face about such a vital message) but it doesn't just throw them in as a weak attempt to be "woke" without elaborating on them either. It uses them as part and parcel of the horror. I was more than satisfied with this and I'm eager to see this director do more in the genre. Plus a deeply menacing soundtrack by Gazelle Twin to complete the ambiance.