THE POWER Review–Haunted Hospital Has Searing Commentary
Chad Collins
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THE POWER starring Rose Williams and Shakira Rahman
Written by Corinna Faith
Directed by Corinna Faith
The title of Corinna Faith’s classically frightening The Power is a duality, though one that isn’t entirely clear until its final fifteen minutes. It’s there, the heavy subtext, in both title and action, but the clear meaning and (please excuse me) power of it all is shrouded in the dark, sequestered corners of The Power’s East London hospital setting. And what a setting. Corinna Faith erects an elegant and timeless haunted house, vintage in its world but contemporary in its scares. Rolling blackouts plague 1974 London. But The Power all but guarantees audiences will keep theirs on.
Rose Williams stars as Valerie, or– as she acerbically notes to coworker Babs (Emma Rigsby)– simply Val. The film introduces Val in the middle of a nightmare. She awakens to the visage of an old man with a sinister leer, an image that forces her from bed to scramble around her dingy, citified flat, turning all the lights on. In the morning, Val dresses in nurse’s attire and leaves for her first shift at a local pediatric ward while title cards outline some helpful, but not thematically necessary, historical context– by dint of conflict between local governments and trade unions, London has been subject to frequent, recurring blackouts to preserve power.
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It works well enough as an inciting factor for why Val’s new workplace is so conventionally empty. Horror hospitals are always abandoned. But at least The Power has the foresight to legitimize the vacancy with historical truths. Circumstances are immediately tense. Val’s coworkers, in hushed tones and darting glances, allude to some action from her past. One that simultaneously ruined one man’s life and her own credibility. Punctuated, sharp strings, akin to Carl Zittrer’s seminal Black Christmas score, imbue the proceedings with sufficient tension and uncertainty. Though grounded in reality, everything feels considerably off. It’s like some kind of nightmarish healing ground-bound by dream logic and liminal spaces. As one of the East End hospital’s nurses (Nuala McGowan) notes, “A place people die should never be allowed to get that dark.”
Val, following a faux pas witnessed by Matron (Diveen Harry), is assigned to work that night’s blackout shift. Just Val, a few graveyard attendants, and the patients in the pitch black, boundless hospital. It’s clear that Val in particular is afraid of the dark for something more personal than primal, age-old survival instincts. There’s something haunting her, and only her, in the dark.
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As Val wanders the hospital, sometimes lost, sometimes on clerical errands, the rich thematic tapestry is unspooled, slowly yet steadily. The threat is not just the dark, but the power of men and silent witnesses. Val is neither safe in the dark with her ghosts nor in the light with the hospital’s staff. The human threat proves considerably more engaging and perennially frightening than the routine possession antics that take hold of The Power’s middle act. Candles are blown out, hands appear from shadows, and unseen forces drag Val into decrepit basements and cloistered closets.
Rose Williams’s immensely physical performance certainly elevates it. It’s one that calls to mind the captivating contortion of Ashley Bell in The Last Exorcism. Or, more recently, Morfydd Clark in Saint Maud. It’s a committed performance. One that permits Val and her charge, Saba (Shakira Rahman) to spider walk through some of The Power’s more familiar stretches. Familiar and, unfortunately, frustratingly dark. Though a pair of Corinna Faith’s Wan-esque scares are effective, most are too dark to land with optimal impact. The music stings, but awareness of whatever scary image is on-screen is delayed. A combination of awkward lighting and nebulous staging.
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Morning soon comes, however, and The Power is quick to course-correct with a searing and no-less-frightening indictment of possession as violation and power as an enduring ghost in its own right. Though somewhat bogged down by exposition the audience had likely already picked up on, the final showdown– complete is levitation, spectral screams, and cat-and-mouse pursuits– is where the true efficacy of The Power becomes clear. A ghost story for the #MeToo era. The Power is a nuanced and consistently frightening examination of power and gender inequities. And their combined capacity to haunt both the living and the dead. It’s a near knockout.
The Power is now streaming on Shudder.
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The Power
Summary
The Power is a blistering and classically haunting tale of ghosts and the monsters that make them.
