The Power (2021) Female Solidarity & a Fear of the Dark (Review)

Acorn Media are doing great work, bringing movies previously locked away on Shudder, presenting them to the home video market. Corinna Faith’s The Power isn’t the first to receive this treatment, but it is the latest. And before launching in to what the movie is and my feelings on it, you need to present the context for the world it takes place in. Mid-1970s London, a time when Britain was in economic crisis – so much so they inherited the title of “the sick man of Europe”. With an economy in tatters and fuel production battered by strikes, Britain adopted a three-day working week with overnight Blackouts enforced. The movie doesn’t do the best job of establishing this context, hence why I am doing it before I launch into my review proper. 

Rose Williams is Val, and she has had a horrid upbringing after being abandoned by her parents and raised in a care system during an era when the world didn’t care. To her, working as a nurse is a dream come true, as she can help those less fortunate. Pity then that the hospital she is assigned to has no interest in idealism, with the matron assigning her the night shift on her very first shift. Most of the hospital moves to a central site, leaving only the smallest of skeleton crews on board to service the Maternity & Intensive Care wards. The rest of the hospital is in the dark. Not just any dark, you can barely see your own hand in front of your face-dark. As one of the other nurses says, no building where people die should ever be THAT dark. And this is one of those old Victorian buildings that reeks of death, too. This all creates a fantastic setting for a horror movie to take place in, and as you’d expect, there’s something else hiding in the pitch black of this gothic nightmare.

To be transparent, this is the second time I have watched Faith’s movie – the first I only got around half an hour in before bouncing off it. The reason I did this is that it is very slow to build up before fully revealing what it is. I am being so frank to make a point: not all movies are well suited to a streaming release, and The Power is but one. The script takes time to establish who each character is and their relationships. There might not be anything in the dark, nonetheless, anyone would be reluctant to wander into the absolute nothingness of the pitch black. The imagination can conjure things much more frightening than reality, after all. Therefore, it makes sense that the characters would be like this too. Meaning, this sort of reluctance and patience doesn’t exactly lend itself well to the go-go-go pace that has been baked into watching habits of the “Netflix era”. Truthfully, Blu-Ray is the best home for the Power.

The Power may be the name of the game but this is 100% Rose Williams show with her putting in a career-making performance. As Val is introduced, she carries herself and speaks are the behavioural mannerisms of someone with a past of abuse – easily cajoled, meek, and sheepish. It is only when she interacts with a young girl named Saba (Shakira Rahman) that we get to see who she really is, and that is a person that cares deeply about others. Her inherently good nature is taken advantage of and manipulated by a fellow nurse (Emma Rigby), Babs – who sends her out into the dark for no reason other than spite. While utterly lost, the true nature of this horror movie is revealed, the one beyond the slow-burning dread of the unseen and unknown, at least. This is a possession movie, but not in the way you’d expect. In being exposed to whatever is out there, Rose Williams’ performance comes to channel Isabelle Adjani’s legendary turn in Possession (1981), with its out-of-body convulsions and screaming hysteria. It’s fair to say Williams gave everything to her incredibly impressive performance.

This is no normal possession movie. Typically, that sub-genre is preoccupied with the subversion of religious iconography – Corinna Faith (who directs and wrote the script), uses the sub-genre as a means to talk about cycles of abuse. Much of the framing centres on sexual abuse from those in positions of power; going further, gaslighting is also a key aspect of The Power’s text. To return to the idea of possession, as well as it being the source of horror, it is also used as a means to communicate female solidarity and women fighting back against sexual violence. Personally, I appreciate the risks taken, especially when they are pulled off as well as they are, however, this is the exact thing that will draw the ire of that small but hugely vocal corner of the horror community that believe movies such as this shouldn’t have something socially or politically relevant to say.

Before, during and after all the violence takes hold, the atmosphere is the prominent horror tool. As I said earlier, the fear of the unknown is far scarier than anything any horror writer could imagine. This is also true here, the movie is far scarier before ‘the entity’ reveals itself, with the horror after that turn in the tale steering the script away from a one-dimensional fear of the dark for the better. Key to the success of this is the score by the elusive and enigmatic British electronic producer, Gazelle Twin. Even before she started composing, her music was haunting and obscure, charge her with writing music for a horror movie set in a dark, abandoned hospital and it all becomes a match made in heaven. Or should that be hell?

It has been a long time that a horror movie has given us reason to be scared of the dark, as that has been dropped for the over-stylised lighting synonymous with the unending wave of 80s nostalgia trips. For me it takes some bold risks that I to be found either challenging or utterly compelling on a road well worth travelling, for others this will be too slow to find its footing or an affront for that small but ever-vocal group who decry everything that seeks to tell a story about women and female empowerment, labelling it as something which doesn’t belong in horror. Women and people of colour may get short shrift in horror (both of whom feature prominently here) – all the same, the genre allows stories like this to be told, stories that couldn’t be told anywhere else without being cloying. 

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YOU CAN ALSO WATCH THE POWER ON SHUDDER

THANKS FOR READING ROB’s REVIEW OF THE POWER

Reportedly drummer Dave Rowntree still finds this film unwatchable; Graham and Ewan are a little more generous. That said, the film’s main asset is the one director Matthew Longfellow barely seems to notice: it depicts the band on the verge of releasing Modern Life is Rubbish, an album which saved them from one-hit wonder status and set the agenda for the next decade of British rock music. POP SCREEN

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