The Power: What Goes Around Will Come Around

“You will listen to us”

What is it about the dark that is so scary? The unknown? Our own imaginations? Or is it something that lurks deep within our psyches; something we simply don’t want to deal with?

Writer/director Corinna Faith brings us a tale, not only of things that go bump in the night, but brings to light, within the dark, a subject far too ignored in our world: The chronic silencing of women.

Things Are Not Always What They Seem

The film takes place in early 1974 England, when there was a crisis between the government and coal workers, which lead to early blackouts each evening to conserve electricity.

Val (Rose Williams) is a new nurse starting at a decrepit, urban hospital. Meek and submissive, she is intimidated by almost every person she comes into contact with, except the charming Dr. Franklin (Charlie Carrick), who seems to take to Val right away. Val wishes to work with children and Dr. Franklin attempts to help her do so, despite the overbearing hospital matron (Diveen Henry), who won’t seem to give Val a break.

While wandering the halls, Val meets up with Saba (Shakira Rahman), a young, non-English speaking patient of Dr. Franklin and takes to her. As Val’s problems grow with her co-workers and an ominous presence in the hospital begins to make itself known, Saba and Val forge an unlikely bond, not realizing just how much they have in common.

A Whisper To A Scream

Source: Shudder

Shortly after Val begins working the night shift the lights get powered down in the hospital.

She’s forced to orient herself to a multiple level, labyrinth of a hospital while being harassed by the men who work there, scorned by her female colleagues and being plagued by things that go “bump” in the night.

As the evening drags on, she finds herself engaged with an angry spirit, intent on gaining her attention, for what reason, she does not know. The more she tries to run away, the more the spirit torments her, possessing her body if need be, to get it’s mission completed.

As Val meets character after character in the hospital, the mystery gradually becomes clearer, as she realizes there is more to fear from the people working there, than the eerie presence haunting her every move.

Source: Shudder

In All Honesty…

If a picture speaks a thousand words, then this film speaks innumerable.

Faith brings us a film that appears, on the surface, as one we’ve seen before. But as the film progresses we see, that what we thought we knew, isn’t actually what is going on.

With skillful and genuinely frightening scares, Faith creates a wake up call for all who are watching. The message? Women are not meant to be fodder for toxic masculinity. Yet from how women are treated on a daily basis and have been for millennia, one would never know it.

Faith brings this subject to the screen in a very inventive and ingenious way using character and metaphor to bring it to life. She writes very skillfully and purposefully, with nothing extraneous or unnecessary and holds off satisying her audience until the very end.

Though the idea of the angry ghost is very common, Faith backs it up with creativity and allegory so painstakingly planned out, it keeps you guessing till the very end. Once you think you’ve “seen it before”, another twist comes in to prove you wrong.

The beauty of this film lies in its pictures and subtleties. Each character represents an archetype of personality and the hospital itself is a character; a massive, looming representation that enshrouds the other characters in it’s powerful, malevolent force. Hopefully, one that is breaking down, just as the hospital in the film is.

It’s climax is not to be missed or misunderstood. Without spoilers, I found it to be an incandescent breath of fresh air. It tingles the spine while blowing you away with metaphorical and corporeal wrath so wonderful, it leaves you speechless and overcome with toasty goosebumps-if you understand it and are open to it.

As a connoisseur of the Horror genre, I found that The Power stands tall amongst it’s predecessors and is definitely a force to be reckoned with.