Review: The Power (2021)
Directed by Corinna Faith; screenplay by Corinna Faith; starring Rose Williams, Emma Rigby and Charlie Carrick.
3/5
The Power is a strong piece of feministic, British horror filmmaking from Corinna Faith that navigates trauma, institutional violence, and revenge. Equal parts chilling and discomforting, the film will certainly be a treat for horror fans, dealing with its central conceit with great depth and a harrowing rage, only falling short towards its end when characters stoop to beating the audience over the head with information and thematic catharsis (an antagonist quite literally tells the main character that he doesn’t have to listen to her because he “[has] all the power”) just to quickly wrap the everything up. It’s a frustrating fate for a film so ingrained with careful, artisanal subtlety, but personally I don’t think it diminishes what comes before.
In mid-seventies Britain, Val (Rose Williams) a well-meaning but slightly timid young woman, starts her trial shift as a trainee nurse in what is revealed to be a devilishly labyrinthine hospital and almost immediately falls afoul of the matron (Diveen Henry) when she makes the mistake of expressing an interest in the research of the beguilingly handsome Doctor Franklyn (Charlie Carrick). Frustrated with what she perceives as Val’s attempt to undermine her authority, the matron sentences her to the night shift in the Intensive Care Unit, a sentence that will inevitably lead to Val navigating the twisting, liminal halls of the hospital by gaslight and candle, given the Three-Day Week power strikes going on at the time. During what will turn into a nightmarish first shift, Val meets a whole array of new players, each with something they won’t let on to, and as each of their dark secrets and sources of personal shame come to the dwindling wisps of light available, it becomes clear that Val herself is being followed by some abominable memory.
There’s a lot that can be said of Faith’s tale of ghostly revenge, really. It’s an original, cleverly small-scale film that doesn’t sacrifice its messaging as a result of its obvious economic restraints. If anything, the fact that the film clearly doesn’t have a lot of resources to play around with seems to work in its favour. For example, The Power mainly only alludes to the supernatural and focuses most of its energy on the more tangible of horror elements. Fundamentally, The Power is more chiller than rollercoaster-ride, many a slightly fainter of heart viewer will be happy to hear. It’ll have you on the edge of your seat, but it will rarely punish you for being there with an obnoxiously loud bang designed with the sole intention of making you flinch.
The cast is also stripped-back and as such character is really brought to the fore. It’s never really addressed head-on, but Babs (Emma Rigby), the other (only slightly) more experienced nurse Val is to work with, clearly has a long emotional history with her new colleague. It’s a story told in looks and glances and intonations that don’t get in the way of the central conflict but is paid off later on when the lake is finally dragged.
It’s also a story wherein the supernatural and the tangible are really played against one another, where there’s a deniability in anything really ever happening, and this conflict is used thematically to an effective degree.
Val’s experience with the otherworldly is personal and mostly plays out in the dark, quiet corridors of the hospital or simply behind closed doors – away from both the other staff and even at times the eyes of the the viewer – so it is unsurprising when her colleagues inevitably start to doubt Val’s judgment. When Val’s own past comes more into focus, it becomes even harder to tell entirely whether everything is just a figment of her trauma or actually playing out. The decision to have a great deal of the threat be Val herself compounds this confusion, but eventually we are given some answers.
What I mean when I say that this is utilised thematically is that when the ugly truth finally trudges up the steps from the basement (in often heavily on the nose dialogue-led sequences; it slowly becomes clear that Faith’s strong suit is atmosphere and structure, not dialogue), the characters implicated in the grotesque, systematic sexual abuse uncovered use the ambiguity of the events of the night passed to obfuscate the facts it has shed light upon. Quite simply, the supernatural is used to examine the concept of gaslighting.
It’s a slow burn, and – though the final execution isn’t entirely up to the standards the first hour or so set – the revelatory climax, shifting everything – from the symbolic and historic elements to the victims, the perpetrators and the facilitators – perfectly into place, is certainly worth the wait. If you’ve recently seen something like Promising Young Women and are seeking a similarly scathing tragedy, maybe without the slightly problematic baggage, The Power is probably for you. There’s less of an emphasis on the day-to-day examples of our cultural violence against women, but the film examines much the same systems that protect the violent perpetrators, namely those with all of the power.
Watched on 10th May 2021