Filmed in the historic listed building, Blythe House, The Power is the latest horror film to arrive on genre streaming platform, Shudder. Set in the year 1974, it follows new nurse Val (Rose Williams) on her first shift in hospital. Her new job coincides with the rolling blackouts brought on by the miner’s strike, and after a disagreement with her superior, Val finds herself working the nightshift. As the darkness envelops her she finds herself haunted both figuratively and literally from something that has ties to her dark past. Can she survive till morning?
With The Power, writer and director Corinna Faith has created what feels like an authentic slice of hospital life circa the seventies. From the look of the building interior to the costumes, visually the viewer is instantly transported back in time. This is further reinforced by the power dynamics and interactions between the sexes; Val and the other nurses are subservient to the doctors around them, with little attention paid to what they have to say. This is an important factor that comes into play later on in proceedings as Val desperately tries to get people to listen to her story. Her lower status amongst the nurses, coupled with some blemishes from her past, seal her fate as someone to be overlooked, but that proves to be a deadly mistake. By honing in on historical accuracies, Faith highlights some true horror amongst the more fantastical.
The set-up to Val’s first night shift is handled gently, Faith subtly placing markers early on to where the narrative will venture. It’s a complicated and clever feat, and through just a couple of throwaway comments from the day staff, the audience, like Val, are dreading the night shift. Once the blackouts begin, the film is plunged headfirst into darkness, Val having just a small lamp to see by. Faith uses this darkness to cast shadows and create deep pockets of nothingness into which anything could be lurking. The technique works perfectly in creating a chilling atmosphere and uses negative space to generate the bulk of the frights. Similarly, by placing the viewer firmly into Val’s perspective, some of her anxiety and fear washes over the viewer and takes them along with her.
Where The Power begins to wobble is within the dynamics between the nurses. With the exception of the appropriately titled Comfort, and wide-eyed Val, the rest of the nursing staff are far from the caring and nurturing ideal. Babs, a woman from Val’s past, is especially vile. With such a high proportion of the nurses being portrayed as mean and malicious, it makes it hard to properly invest in them and hope that they survive the night. Val encounters so many similar personality types that it also causes an element of repetition to creep in and drags the pace down to a plod. Furthermore, narrative revelations towards the end are fairly obvious and let down the groundwork put into creating a creepy environment.
A great setting for a horror story, Corinna Faith works tirelessly to make The Power an atmospheric and eerie tale. The hard work mostly pays off, though some repetition and obvious plot shifts detract from the enjoyment.
The Power arrives on Shudder from 8th April 2021.
The Power
Summary
What begins as a well-formed piece of atmospheric horror gets let-down by some familiar narrative tropes.
