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A light touch doesn’t suit the heavy themes in “The Power,” a horror psychodrama that’s specifically concerned with sexual misconduct and then more generally about the abuse of (you guessed it) power at a London hospital. These social issues are obviously broad enough to still be prevalent, but “The Power” is set in 1974, as an opening title card explains:

“Trade unions and the government are at war. The economy is in crisis. Blackouts have been ordered to conserve power, plunging the nation into darkness every night.”

This prefatory text suggests a class-based understanding of what happens to Val ( Rose Williams ), a meek trainee nurse who’s studying “the connection between poverty and health” (her words) when she’s visited and possessed by a ghost at the East London Infirmary.

Val’s topic of study is worthy, as is the filmmakers' focus on the many little ways that Val is pressured (both socially and professionally) to keep quiet about, uh, everything that happens at the hospital. Unfortunately, the Infirmary’s chain of command is often more interesting than the secrets that Val must keep under her nurse’s cap. And while systemic abuse is often overwhelming because of its universality, the inciting details of Val’s problems are too impersonal to be disturbing.

So it’s not surprising that Val, being a meek but well-meaning do-gooder type, takes a moment to discover what’s really going on at the East London Infirmary. First she accidentally embarrasses her supervisor, the school-marmish Matron ( Diveen Henry ), who warns Val that she must follow the Matron’s instructions on how to wear her work uniform (skirt three inches below the knees) and when to talk to the staff doctors (pretty much never, since “they communicate above your level”).

Val doesn’t break these rules willingly: she’s asked impertinent questions (ie: for her professional opinion) by the young and unusually warm Dr. Franklyn ( Charlie Carrick ). Franklyn’s status presents a credible damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t dilemma, the kind that often arises when you get contradictory instructions from two different bosses. So the hospital’s Matron punishes Val by assigning her to the night shift on her first day. That decision inevitably leads Val to discover something that may or may not be haunting the Infirmary.

I say “inevitably” because “The Power” is a possession flick, complete with spastic heaving, disbelieving co-workers, and a frightened pre-teen who tries and fails to warn everybody about the dangers that (mostly) come at night. Most of the items on this formulaic checklist are used well enough, but none of them are surprising or so well-realized that they’re still compelling.

In fact, the weakest parts of “The Power” are the ones where a dark, melancholy ambience is meant to carry the movie, especially when an invisible presence takes control of Val’s body and shakes her like a ragdoll. The most memorable of these scenes is the one where an unseen hand lifts Val’s skirt over her knees, which are presented from behind; a chorus of ghostly, Penderecki-esque moaning can be heard on the soundtrack, but it doesn’t add much to the sequence. I don’t know if that’s the image you want your genre movie to be remembered for, but it does stand out, if only for its sheer brake-tapping gentility.

The rest of “The Power” isn’t as jarring. A lot of the dialogue, which is credited to writer/director Corinna Faith , is dry and insistent. Take for example any scene where Val’s colleagues talk about the above-mentioned pre-teen, Saba ( Shakira Rahman ). Saba, being a young person of color who doesn’t speak fluent English, is treated as an abstract thought problem by Val’s stereotypically prim and/or disengaged peers. Saba is also presumably who Matron refers to when she peevishly tells Val that “The connection [between poverty and health] is that people around here live like animals.” Even Terry ( Nuala McGowan ), one of the other night shift nurses, treats Saba as less than human. Referring to Val’s rapport with Saba, Terry smirks: “Will ya look at that? Snow White has a way with the animals.” These comments are so obviously wrong as to be waved away uncritically: even working-class people can become jaded enough to be cruel. That’s what a little power does, as the title suggests.

Still, Terry’s “Snow White” crack is also basically accurate: Val’s character is simple enough to be reduced to her purity. She’s new, she’s determined, and she means well, so she’s ostensibly sympathetic. That’s enough to keep things going during the movie’s first half, which mostly concerns the hospital as a bureaucratic microcosm of competing personalities. But eventually, Val needs to be more than just a generic symbol of right-minded martyrdom, and she’s never allowed to become more than that. The circumstances of her suffering are too slight to register, making it hard to feel anything for Val beyond a general sympathy. That may be enough for already-invested horror buffs, but everyone else can sit this one out.  

Now available on Shudder.

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in  The New York Times ,  Vanity Fair ,  The Village Voice,  and elsewhere.

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The Power (2021)

Rose Williams as Val

Emma Rigby as Babs

Charlie Carrick as Dr. Franklin

Gbemisola Ikumelo as Comfort

Paul Antony-Barber as The Chief

Clara Read as Gail

Diveen Henry as Matron

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• Tommy Boulding
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• Elizabeth Bernholz
• Max de Wardener

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A supernatural horror story grounded in real-world trauma, The Power marks writer-director Corinna Faith as an emerging talent to watch.

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The Power movie review: A frightening film that skilfully blends supernatural and real-world horrors

The power movie review: rose williams is absolutely first-rate as a young woman breaking apart under immense strain and yet finding her inner strength to battle an all-too-human evil in the end..

The Power cast: Rose Williams, Emma Rigby, Diveen Henry, Charlie Carrick The Power director: Corinna Faith The Power rating: 4 stars

There has been a recent, welcome trend of late among filmmakers to use horror as a genre to comment on social ills. Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning 2017 film Get Out with its trenchant criticism of casual racism is one of the popular examples. The Power, available on BookMyShow Stream in India, which targets sexual misconduct in hierarchical institutions, is less subtle than some other movies, but is just as effective.

Written and directed by Corinna Faith in her feature debut, the film is set in 1974’s London, specifically in the Three-Day Week period. Lasting from January to March, it saw the Conservative government mandating blackouts across the country as part of measures to deal with the economic crisis. The crisis itself was a result of striking miners that affected the production of coal, and thus the electricity.

Our heroine is Val (Rose Williams), a nurse who is forced to work both day and night shifts by the harsh Matron (Diveen Henry) due to the audacity of talking to a doctor as an equal. If that wasn’t enough, she feels the leery eyes of the doctors, one of whom casually tries to slip a hand up her skirt. The Power gets scary much before the blackout sets in.

Most of the patients are being shifted to another hospital and the remaining few are cared by only four nurses, including Val. What little equipment is available is powered by feeble generators.

But Val is determined to make the best of it in a nearly dark, empty hospital. Despite the circumstances, she is optimistic and genuinely wishes to care for patients unlike other, more jaded nurses who have been at the hospital longer.

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However, despite the seeming isolation, she realises there is an entity in the hospital that is certainly not human. The presence manifests itself through particles of ash suspended in the air, whispers that call out to her and a terrified little girl.

Horror ensues. Corinna Faith strikes a right balance between two kinds of scares the story is dealing with. For instance, Val gets possessed by a ghost and kills a person. A fellow nurse refuses to believe her and instead says nothing happened — which is an obvious yet smart parallel to the scepticism and gaslighting that the victims of sexual crimes are usually treated with.

The Power is frightening in more ways than one.

The cinematographer Laura Bellingham uses dimly-lit corridors and lack of lighting to unnerving effect. The visuals go a long way towards building the tension pervading in the movie. Hospitals at night must be scary anyway, even with the electricity but here, the sense of dread is heightened manifold.

Rose Williams is absolutely first-rate as a young woman breaking apart under immense strain and yet finding her inner strength to battle an all-too-human evil in the end. The young actor slips into a clearly challenging role with the ease of a veteran. She is especially impressive in a possession scene that riffs on movies like The Exorcist.

The Power ends on an empowering note that, like most of the movie, is far from subtle. Quite the opposite, in fact. It has a jackhammer effect to the mind, and that works just as well.

The Power would have been a stellar horror-thriller even if it were more traditional and did not have a deeper layer to the story. As it is, its concoction of supernatural horror and mundane, quotidian horror creates an experience that is often enjoyable in a vicariously thrilling way but mostly unsettles one to the core, largely due to the real-world echoes.

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The Power review – merciless East End hospital horror

A fragile nurse encounters malevolent forces on night duty in Corinna Faith’s efficient screw-tightener with a feminist slant

I n Don McCullin’s 1970s photographs of grinding poverty in the East End, Whitechapel looks like it might have in Dickens’s lifetime. And it’s grim deprivation that student nurse Val (Rose Williams) walks into on her first day on the wards of an east London hospital in this feminist horror; her first patient is a little girl with rickets and stunted growth. Written and directed by Corinna Faith, this film is a real screw-tightener, ingeniously set during the miners’ strike in January 1974 . What could be scarier than the lights going out in a Victorian hospital in the dead of night?

When Val arrives most of the patients are being transferred to another hospital for the night because of a scheduled power cut. Val is on the “dark shift” – staying to cover two wards kept going by a generator. She is too embarrassed to admit that she’s scared of the dark, triggered by childhood abuse in a care home. Pretty soon Val is clinging to the corridor walls, groping her way in the dark – and that’s even before things go bang in the night.

There are cracking lines in the script; unexpectedly, some of them very funny. In the staff room, an Irish nurse is reading Stephen King’s Carrie (not actually published until three months later, in April). “It’s about a girl who’s had enough and burns it all down,” jokes the nurse. And what follows is like Carry on Carrie – or maybe more Carry on Exorcist. Val becomes possessed by a demonic power. Or is she experiencing a psychotic episode? Either way, the bodies are piling up as a result of masculinity (in the hospital and elsewhere) that’s so toxic it’s literally contaminating everything.

After a bit of a damp start, the scares are merciless. Demonically possessed characters convulsing are ten a penny in horror movies, but Val’s limbs twist like she’s a doll being yanked by a spiteful toddler. It’s unbearable to see in places, especially since Val has already suffered so much. Now some kind of malevolent force is taking over her body, another violation. Empowerment for female victims comes late in the day too, making this a raw and painful watch.

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‘The Power’ Review: A Blackout Thriller with a Performance That Would Make Linda Blair Proud

Kate erbland, editorial director.

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In 1973, beset by a labor crisis that led striking miners to upend the coal industry (and thus most of the country’s power supply), Britain decided to conserve what power they were still able to generate with a wild idea: planned electricity cuts. Between New Year’s Eve 1973 and early March 1974, the country periodically shut off most of its power in the dead of night, leaving its cold and scared citizens desperate for morning. First-time feature filmmaker Corinna Faith sets “The Power” inside this strange, scary bit of history and uses an already ingenious idea, only to cleverly nudge it into even more impressive, spine-tingling territory.

Young nurse Val (Rose Williams) hates the power cuts, popping out of bed each morning to turn on every light in her tiny flat, and we soon learn that her fears go far beyond the usual darkness. When we meet Val, it’s early January, cold and terribly bleak, but it’s also her first day at work at the East London Royal Infirmary, and she can’t wait to start. Precise and pin-neat, she’s an orphan who grew up in a dingy Catholic girls’ home in the same neighborhood as the infirmary, and she fervently believes that she might be able to help her patients, especially the kids.

But lofty ideas don’t really have a place at the hospital. Within minutes of arriving in the bizarre, maze-shaped building that relies on color-coded floors for navigation (and even that doesn’t always help in the labyrinthine space), Val is already taken down a few pegs by the severe Matron (Diveen Henry). The doctors don’t see her, and the men who do take notice (all the doctors are men, of course) are eager to get a hand up her skirt. As Val struggles to fit in, cinematographer Laura Bellingham’s camera peers down dark corridors and into black rooms, framing Val in an austere environment that hardly seems conducive to good care. This would be a fine place to set a horror film even without the lingering terror of all the lights turning off.

When Val is forced into staying at the hospital overnight for a brutal double shift — alongside a skeleton crew, a handful of patients, and noisy generators that power only small pockets of the place — she tries to steel herself for what’s to come. If only there wasn’t that weird burning smell following her, or the ashes that seem to seep out of every air shaft, or the whispers that try to draw her into confined spaces any chance they get.

Faith doesn’t traffic in cheap tricks, with only a single jump scare to be found in the film’s tense first half. Instead, she chooses to neatly layer on the possibilities: Maybe it’s just uptight Val projecting her childhood issues on the institution, or perhaps she’s dogged by a shaky reputation (as snidely referenced by old acquaintance Babs, a wonderfully mean Emma Rigby). Or perhaps something really is lingering inside all those dark corridors and black rooms, something coming for Val.

As “The Power” ratchets up the chills, it hints at both a deeper mythology and more wide-ranging concerns at play, but most of all, it’s just  scary. Faith makes the most out of dark rooms and creepy whispers, and all that tension is aided immeasurably by a transformative performance by Williams, as her Val slowly unravels over the course of the night. (The actress has a body-contorting possession scene that would make even Linda Blair’s toes curl.) Williams’ work allows Faith to take some big leaps, anchoring the film through unexpected twists and turns, eye-popping gore, and a series of revelations that steep the film in its occasionally convoluted mythology.

“The Power” is built on subtle elements, but the director’s more ambitious jumps are just as electrifying. Williams, who may be best known as the star of Masterpiece Theatre’s “Sandition,” is revelatory here, and she holds everything together through its shocking final minutes. She, and the film’s earned ending, leave an emotional charge that stings right through the chills, a peek into the darkness that can never be unseen, a light that can never be turned back on.

“The Power” starts streaming on Shudder on Thursday, April 8.

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Tried and true horror settings often have rather boring origins. In the case of mid-century, English hospitals — it's not as if their construction needed to be on the cutting edge; these are buildings meant to store and treat sick patients, so spaciousness is key. There needs to be room for beds, equipment, hazardous waste, and administration to run it all. You're supposed to walk out of a hospital feeling better, but many often don't. There are natural tragedies that happen within their walls, but they aren't unexpected. What really invites a sinister presence to these places are the fresh misdeeds of its inhabitants — ones blinded by a cocktail of human frailty, ironically violating oaths in pursuit of twisted personal desire. When these crimes give way to conspiracy, it's easier to mythologize an evil that has taken residence in something like a hospital. It takes a brave soul to unearth what has been swept under the rug, ready to be resurfaced — for the very point of the existence of sin is to infect all that is untouched by it.

Formal Control: For all that transpires in The Power, the camerawork is clear and concise. It's maybe not as flashy as it could be, but there are many horror films with a similar budget that seem to skimp on technique. This film has a steady hand behind the camera, which goes a long way in keeping the audience invested in its slow-burn scares. For as long as it flirts with the supernatural, The Power keeps its climactic elements close to the vest, opting for a gradual descent into terror, as its lead slowly starts to unravel her workplace's horrid past secrets. The entire atmosphere of The Power is successfully maintained from start to finish. Its scares are built on and integrated into a historical setting. It's not as if the film's only intention is mindless horror. There is an impressive amount of restraint here. It's so easy to imagine the kind of scares that could come out of a darkened hospital; while something is most certainly afoot, if you're expecting blood and guts, you may be disappointed. The Power often feels like a small allegory, a spotlight on the sins of the past. Societal attitudes can change, oppressed groups can gain equity as the human experiment continues, but it can't come at the expense of forgetting how they were treated not so long ago. Even ten years can make a world of a difference. Public opinion often swings wildly like a tetherball. The Power as a piece of art is an example of how far things have come; a female director can partake in genre fun while exploring potent, real-world social topics and history. Marvelous!

Where's The Fun? The Power may contain some real scares, but it is particularly lacking in thrills. Its darkness is also its most limiting aspect. Rose Williams in the lead role has more than enough to work with, and I find her character to be reasonably heroic in relation to her story, but everything around her sometimes is lacking in life. The steady cinematography is also afraid to engage in any wild trickery, so this does feel like a very traditional kind of horror, one where it just has to emanate through the screen instead of reaching out and seizing your eyeballs. That's not a criticism, but the experience as a whole isn't terribly interesting. I respect the decision not to sensationalize the raw material it mines for its scares, but I don't come out of it feeling like it changed the playing field. It's a mindful entry into the genre, but maybe not a lasting one.

The Power's artistic power comes through what first appears to be a tearful subtext, but as it eventually takes to its genre, the unseen becomes the seen. For audiences that prefer understated horror, this film straddles the line. It still retains its dirty, lurid aspects, but it makes a rather tasteful grab for something more. It is competently executed, proof of a cast and crew that they can deliver an old-fashioned English horror. I'm hoping their next has a more fully-formed sense of style.

Related: Interview with The Power filmmaker Corinna Faith

Watch  The Power  via  Amazon  or  Apple TV

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The darkest place is within...

London, 1974. As Britain prepares for electrical blackouts to sweep across the country, trainee nurse Val arrives for her first day at the crumbling East London Royal Infirmary. With most of the patients and staff evacuated to another hospital, Val is forced to work the night shift, finding herself in a dark, near empty building. Within these walls lies a deadly secret, forcing Val to face both her own traumatic past and deepest fears.

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A review by Professor_B

Written by professor_b on september 25, 2021.

Great premise, strong acting and effective atmosphere completely undermined by a bland screenplay that has no faith in it's audience. The first 30 minutes of The Power is really engaging. The strong cast led by the extremely charismatic Rose Williams as Val carries the movie through the standard expository section of the plot. Unfortunately, once this ghost story gets into it's second act the movie devolves into a series of cliché's, poor plotting and heavy-handed monologues. The script is all text and zero subtext. Instead of generating a sense of the uncanny or ominous feeling, The Power le... read the rest.

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The Power (2021)

The Power Showtimes on April 19th, 2024

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Movie Review – The Power (2021)

April 6, 2021 by Tom Beasley

The Power , 2021.

Directed by Corinna Faith. Starring Rose Williams, Shakira Rahman, Emma Rigby, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Theo Barklem-Biggs, Diveen Henry and Charlie Carrick.

A newbie nurse at a London hospital finds herself spending a terrifying evening on the intensive care ward amid a government-imposed blackout.

In the winter of 1973/74, Britain was hit by blackouts as striking miners meant the country’s coal reserves were running low. The Tory prime minister Edward Heath opted to ration electricity usage, with many essential services plunged into inky darkness for periods of time. It’s against the backdrop of that unrest and economic turmoil that writer-director Corinna Faith’s sophomore feature The Power takes place.

Rose Williams plays newbie nurse Val, who has just taken a job at a London hospital. Her tyrannical matron (Diveen Henry) warns her that she’s very much on probation, declaring ominously that “a nurse must give herself entirely – sacrifice”. Unfamiliar with the labyrinthine halls of the hospital, Val is assigned the “Dark Shift” and is allocated to the intensive care unit with less-than-bothered colleague Babs (Emma Rigby). It doesn’t take long for the emergency generator to fail, amplifying the darkness and allowing plenty of things to go bump in the night.

There’s an efficient, atmospheric feel to The Power , which unfolds entirely within the walls of the hospital. Its jumps and jolts might be a little generic, but the command of lighting is impressive and Faith knows how to maximise every shadow and shape moving in the darkness. The atmosphere is assisted by Elizabeth Bernholz and Max de Wardener’s score which, although initially overwrought, becomes a real asset when the movie grows in intensity around it.

Williams does a stellar job in the lead role, conveying the character’s troubled past and increasingly unsettled mental state with expressive eyes piercing through the flickering gas lamps which light the action. One scene in which her character appears to become possessed is a genuinely disquieting display of intense physicality. Few members of the supporting cast get much chance to make an impression, though Theo Barklem-Biggs is effectively creepy as a lecherous hospital employee and youngster Shakira Rahman is charming as runaway child Saba, with whom Val forms an emotional bond.

The movie suffers in a lot of ways from its proximity to the similarly themed Saint Maud . Like that film, this marries elements of religion and medicine through the lens of a female protagonist. But sadly, The Power lacks the overall sharpness of Rose Glass’s film and there’s nothing here to match Morfydd Clark’s live-wire central performance. Positioned against last year’s horror hit, The Power sometimes looks a little pedestrian.

Although Faith’s script deals with some serious and powerful themes bubbling beneath its surface, these are left under-explored and particularly suffer in the face of a third act twist which feels as if it has been borrowed from a considerably sillier movie. Ultimately, The Power feels like it never fully commits to any element of its premise and, as a result, emerges as a fitfully effective exercise in hospital horror. Rather fittingly for a movie set during a blackout, it gets lost in the dark.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★

Tom Beasley is a freelance film journalist and wrestling fan. Follow him on Twitter via @TomJBeasley for movie opinions, wrestling stuff and puns.

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Review: London goes dark, supernatural thriller ‘The Power’ goes dim

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Horror meets history in writer-director Corinna Faith’s “The Power,” a supernatural thriller set during the 1974 London blackouts. Rose Williams plays Val, a novice nurse who has encounters with the paranormal while working the night shift at a darkened hospital. But while Williams and Faith do a fine job of capturing the frustrating powerlessness of a low-wage-earning woman in a sexist and classist society, “The Power” never generates much in the way of shocks or excitement.

The film works best in its opening half-hour, as Val struggles to fit in at her new job. She annoys her boss by having an intelligent conversation with one of the doctors. She irritates her co-workers, who find her nerdy and clumsy — and who have heard rumors that years before she lied about a sexual assault. Plus she’s afraid of the dark, which makes working in the hospital’s inky shadows unnerving.

Review: In horror films and thrillers, location, location, location often isn’t enough

Reviews of digital and streaming genre movies including “The Stylist,” “Dementer,” “Lucky,” “The Canyonlands,” “The Devil Below” and “Son.”

March 5, 2021

If “The Power” weren’t angling to be a horror film, it might be a decent drama. It’s set at a fascinating time in U.K. history, when the government and the labor movement were often at odds, causing disruptions to daily life; and Val is a unique character, quietly pushing back against atrophied institutions as well as her own past traumas and fears.

But as soon as the genre elements start creeping into the picture, “The Power” quickly dims. Rather than craftily building suspense and establishing a meaningful supernatural mythology, Faith throws a bunch of visual clichés onto the screen. As Val wanders through the wards she comes across old photographs with mysterious out-of-focus figures in the background, and notebooks filled with maniacal scribbles. She sees faces in the darkness and people whose bodies contort grotesquely.

All of these images are meant to point to the larger secret Val needs to uncover, but none of them are scary enough on their own to make the mystery compelling. Instead, the most intriguing part of “The Power” is Val herself, and her persistent inability to get anyone to take her or her warnings seriously.

In the end, this movie is more inclined toward the sober exploration of class- and gender-based discrimination than toward making the audience jump out of their seats. The message here is strong. The delivery is flat.

'The Power'

Not rated Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes Playing: Starts April 8, streaming on Shudder

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2021 Directed by Corinna Faith

The darkest place is within...

London, 1974. As Britain prepares for electrical blackouts to sweep across the country, trainee nurse Val arrives for her first day at the crumbling East London Royal Infirmary. With most of the patients and staff evacuated to another hospital, Val is forced to work the night shift, finding herself in a dark, near empty building. Within these walls lies a deadly secret, forcing Val to face both her own traumatic past and deepest fears.

Rose Williams Emma Catherine Rigby Charlie Carrick Gbemisola Ikumelo Nuala McGowan Theo Barklem-Biggs Diveen Henry Paul Antony-Barber Clara Read Robert Goodman Shakira Rahman Marley Chesham Joe Haddow Maria Major

Director Director

Corinna Faith

Producers Producers

Matthew James Wilkinson Rob Watson Tom Harberd Elliot Ross Fenella Ross

Writer Writer

Editors editors.

Tommy Boulding Rebecca Lloyd

Cinematography Cinematography

Laura Bellingham

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Lizzie Francke Will Clarke Phil Hunt Compton Ross Andy Mayson Mike Runagall

Production Design Production Design

Francesca Massariol

Art Direction Art Direction

Katherine Black May Davies

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Elena Riccabona

Visual Effects Visual Effects

Mark Wellband

Title Design Title Design

Matthew Jones

Composers Composers

Max de Wardener Elizabeth Bernholz

Sound Sound

Patrick Ghislain Christer Melén Julien Naudin Tarn Willers Joakim Sundström

Costume Design Costume Design

Holly Smart

Makeup Makeup

Jennifer Drew Scarlett O'Connell Cliff Wallace Becci Mapes Carly Guy Greta Reichel Serena Grace Marta Bagnoli Karolina Bartnik

Air Street Films Stigma Films BFI Head Gear Films Metrol Technology Kreo Films

Primary Language

Spoken languages.

English Urdu

Releases by Date

03 jun 2021, 11 nov 2021, 09 dec 2021, 16 feb 2022, 08 apr 2021, 01 jun 2022, 05 oct 2022, 16 jun 2022, releases by country.

• Digital VOD
• Physical 12 DVD & Blu-Ray
• Digital 12 MyCanal

Russian Federation

• Theatrical 18+
• Theatrical 12
• Theatrical ทั่วไป
• Digital 15 Shudder
• Digital Shudder

92 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Michelle ★★★½ 11

“LeT HoRrOr FiLmS bE HoRrOr FiLmS” man fuck you. believe women & believe girls.

Review by Bunny🐰🪓 ★★★

More powerful than expected.

The Power revolves around a trainee nurse on her first day at the empty East London Royal Infirmary, where she's forced to face her own traumatic past to confront the malevolent force that's intent on destroying everything around her.

Every time i finish a movie I reflect back on everything that has happened in it and it's easier to judge them when they are really good or utter shit right from the very beginning to the end. But when you come across something like this it's hard to reach that conclusion.

The Power took me completely by surprise not because of its ending or the twist that it was carrying which was pretty easy to predict…

Review by jjennings85 ★★★½ 8

I went on to Shudder to see if they finally added Slaxx to it’s library in Canada. Still nothing. Saw this one pop up and read what it was about and thought I’d give it a shot.  This is about a nurse who has to work a night shift at a hospital during blackouts and is in charge of patients using only generators while most of the hospital is dark and empty. Things don’t go too smoothly for poor Val.  Kind of a slow build up but they sure use the creepy setting beautifully. It has some nice scares and I really like what they did and how everything played out.  This is a well done supernatural/psychological horror movie, so if you’re into those types of movies then give this one a watch.

Review by Helen ★★★★

The Power is a tense, single location horror film that follows a nurse on her first night in a mostly empty hospital during a blackout. 

Set in the 70’s with a perfectly eerie hospital vibe that is bathed in all forms of darkness. 

While it is a narrative we’ve seen before, there’s an oppressive tone that feels relevant. The film also sets itself apart with clever, stylized lighting and cinematography. It’s dimly lit with exaggerated chiaroscuro and an atmosphere that mixes classical horror with the psycho-dramatic horror we get from newer releases. 

It’s a mood. Claustrophobic and unsettling, and a thinly veiled message of trauma - this deserves a watch. 

*I’m probably sitting somewhere between a 3.5 and 4 but rounding up for Rose William’s performance.

Review by Tony the Terror ★★★★ 2

Girl Ghost Power!

Again, I’m a total sucker for a movie with a creepy house (or hospital in this case) and lots of dark and creepy atmosphere and this has that in spades. Love the idea of a mandatory power outage as the setting for a horror movie too.

It doesn’t break any new ground, but damn it does a really great job with what it does so I’m looking forward to seeing what director Corinna Faith comes up with next. It better be a genre film! Rose Williams kinda blew my mind as well. Her performance is impeccable and I started watching this again as soon as it ended because I wanted more of that great atmosphere as well…

Review by silvia ★★★½

i'm not really scared of the dark but i am scared of men, so i kinda get this.

Review by pd187 ★★ 3

boring!!!! wanted them to cut to richard ayoade with a big mustache saying some shit like "garth could take an item as innocent as a pair of scissors and make them seem threatening...". great premise but besides symmetrical hallway shots scored to bum-bum-bum synthwave (why?? considering when its set i wish this had a lush donaggio melodrama score but i guess shudder originals require this shit) and low-contrast color-grade thats either desaturated pastels or piss, this suffers from trying to disguise a twist obvious to anybody knowing what post-babadook elevated/trauma movies are like now; hmm, will the scowling african nurse turn out to be the mater suspiriorum of this scary hospital, or does the friendly white doctor set up as socially-conscious actually have a dark side?? but even clumsy, telegraphed commentary (one character seems designed to stick it to anybody who thinks women cant be doctors) gets dropped for a series of sub-annabelle scares & generic, uninteresting images. halloween ii undefeated!

Review by Paul Thomas ★★★★

The Power is like The Devil's Backbone meets Carrie. And everyone who knows me knows anything like Carrie is my weakness. In fact a character is reading Carrie in this. And that's about the 20 minute mark, when I was on the fence with the movie. And if you've watched as many movies as I have you know when a character refences another movie, that movie probably influenced the movie you're watching. So I was like "sweet is this movie gonna be like Carrie!?"

I also love the title, which I assumed was just a boring generic title before I watched. But then you realize "power" has a triple meaning in this - the electrical power outage that causes the chaos; the power dynamics that caused past horrors to happen; and the physical power to fight back.

Women supporting women. My favorite horror movie of 2021, so far.

Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★½ 9

A.V. Club review . LET HORROR FILMS BE HORROR FILMS. People can ferret out subtext for themselves.

Review by MJsays ★★★

Saint Maud  in the ward.

Riddled with clichés, but with some sharp writing and a committed central performance from Rose Williams, this little spookfest is lifted above the line of mediocrity. Even if the ending was slightly silly, the journey getting there was worth the ride.

Review by Shay DeHans ★★★½

It’s almost as if you can make a rape/revenge movie without gratuitously brutalizing a woman on camera

Review by Theo ★★

Barricaded by (and reliant on) unholy atmosphere, Rose William’s Val is a vulnerable nurse hiding behind a devastating past, succumbing to demons - personal and literal - as they take advantage of her weakened and fish-out-of-water state in a blacked-out, ratty hospital dripping with malevolence - and a tad too much canned predictability. 

It would help if everyone save Val wasn’t completely detestable, which I gather may be the point, but all it does is come across as aggressive and nasty for the sake of aggressive nastiness, rather aimlessly. It’s just a bit unsavoury, not fresh, too hot-headed and too one-note. Surface-level exploration of the themes which the passion for is clear, just not the execution, with an almost nose-holding…

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• User reviews

It is a hair-raising journey into the world of two lovers as both their families are ripped apart for the sake of revenge and power, and an entertaining look at how they rise out of that pit... Read all It is a hair-raising journey into the world of two lovers as both their families are ripped apart for the sake of revenge and power, and an entertaining look at how they rise out of that pit of blood lust and despair, together. It is a hair-raising journey into the world of two lovers as both their families are ripped apart for the sake of revenge and power, and an entertaining look at how they rise out of that pit of blood lust and despair, together.

• Mahesh Manjrekar
• Siddharth Salvi
• Vidyut Jammwal
• Shruti Haasan
• Salil Ankola
• 110 User reviews
• 6 Critic reviews

• Devi Das Kalidas Thakur

• Pari (Praveen)

• (as Prateik)

• Shaila Ramdas Thakur

• Ratna Thakur

• Francis Dcosta

• Vishambhar Rana

• Thakur's Maid

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Did you know

• Trivia Inspired from The Godfather 1972.

User reviews 110

• anirudhagupta01
• Jan 23, 2021
• How long is The Power? Powered by Alexa
• January 14, 2021 (India)
• Galani Entertainments
• Pen Studios
• Zee Studios
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 33 minutes

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• New Hindi Movies

The Power: Release Date, Trailer, Songs, Cast

• Release Date 14 January 2021
• Language Hindi
• Genre Action, Crime, Drama
• Duration 2h 33min
• Cast Vidyut Jammwal, Shruti Haasan, Zakir Hussain, Sachin Khedekar, Sonal Chauhan, Jisshu Sengupta, Mahesh Manjrekar, Medha Manjrekar, Prateik Babbar, Mrunmayee Deshpande, Sudhanshu Pandey, Yuvika Chaudhary, Salil Ankola, Sameer Dharmadhikari, Chetan Hansraj, Aham Sharma, Vidyadhar Joshi, Savita Malpekar, Ganesh Yadav
• Director Mahesh Manjrekar
• Writer Mahesh Manjrekar, Siddharth Salvi
• Cinematography Rakesh Rawat
• Music Salim–Sulaiman
• Producer Vijay Galani, Pratik Galani, Dhaval Jayantilal Gada, Aksshay Gada
• Production Pen India Limited, Galani Entertainments
• Certificate 13+

About The Power Movie (2021)

The Power Movie Cast, Release Date, Trailer, Songs and Ratings

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The Power Movie Review: Vidyut Jammwal-Shruti Haasan's Film Is A Feeble Ode To The Godfather

Star Cast: Vidyut Jammwal, Shruti Haasan, Mahesh Manjrekar, Jisshu Sengupta, Sachin Khedekar, Prateik Babbar

Director: Mahesh Manjrekar

Available on: Zeeplex

"Aadmi uske kaam se nahi uske soch se bada hota," Kalidas Thakur (Mahesh Manjrekar) advises his son Ramdas (Jishhu Sengupta) when the latter suggests him to avoid meeting a foe who is creating obstacles in their crime business. Kalidas' words ring true for Mahesh Manjrekar's latest directorial venture, The Power too. While the Vidyut Jammwal starrer aims to be a tribute to the Hollywood classic The Godfather , it collapses under the weight of its own lofty ambitions because of the predictable writing.

What's Yay: Vidyut Jammwal, A couple of action sequences

What's Nay: Weak writing

Set against the backdrop of Mumbai underworld, Kalidas Thakur aka Dada (Mahesh Manjrekar) runs an organised crime business with the help of his trusted aid Anwar (Zakir Hussain), elder son Ramdas (Jishhu Sengupta) and Ramdas' brother-in-law (Prateik Babbar). Soon, Kalidas' youngest son Devi Das Thakur (Vidyut Jammwal) returns from Singapore, and is all set to get hitched to his childhood sweetheart and Anwar's daughter Pari aka Parveen (Shruti Haasan).

However, their marriage plans get thwarted when there is a failed assassination attempt on Kalidas and the finger of suspicion is pointed at Anwar. But in a twist, Anwar gets tricked to death, and Pari swears revenge on the Thakur family.

" Mere pet mein jo bachcha hai, uski kasam khati hoon, Thakur khandaan ka ek bhi insaan zinda nahi rahega. Sabko khatam kar dungi main ," Pari makes a loud declaration. On the other hand, Devi Das bound by ties of blood and heritage, is forced to take over the mantle from his father and gets involved in the inevitable cycle of violence, vendetta and power.

Mahesh Manjrekar's gangster film sounds ambitious on paper. Unfortunately, when it comes to the execution, the film misses the target because of the tedious screenplay. One can smell the 'twists' beforehand; blame it on the lack of novel writing. While the bullets fly high, the script runs dry.

If you expect this Vidyut Jammwal starrer to be a Vaastav, then be prepared to get disappointed! Manjrekar tries to make an action film with elements of drama, but struggles to reach the winning point. Also, some of the dialogues in the film come across as tacky. A word of caution for those who cannot stomach graphic violent scenes- this movie has a couple of them.

Performances

Vidyut Jammwal as the chef-turned-gangster is all 'bang-bang' when it comes to the action sequences. The man does what he is best at- some 'spine-breaking' (literally) dishoom-dishoom, smashing bottles on head and aerobic stunts.

Shruti Haasan as Pari starts on a shaky note, and her romance with Vidyut Jammwal's Devi Das lacks a spark. However, she fares better when she switches sides post a tragedy. In The Power, Mahesh Manjrekar, the actor excels better than Mahesh Manjrekar, the director. The actor is reliable as the powerful mafia kingpin.

Jishhu Sengupta as the short-tempered, profanity-spewing Ramdas, merely plays an exaggerated version of his casual self. Prateik Babbar's rhyme-loving character springs no surprise. Sachin Khedekar as the wily opponent to Mahesh Manjrekar's Kalidas pulls an effective act.

Yuvika Chaudhary plays a scheming sister-in-law who is armed with 'taunts' and 'devious plotting'. Sonal Chauhan in an extended cameo, ends in the film only to lend a shoulder to the heartbroken Devi Das, and get bumped off in the most 'cliched' manner.

Technical Aspects

Rakesh Rawat's camera work captures the bloodshed on the screen quite well. The hand-to-hand combats, gun fights, kicks and chases pack a punch, but at time, the slow mo shots kills some of the fun. Sarvesh Parab's editing could have been a little more taut to make the narrative gripping.

Arijit Singh's romantic ballad 'Oh Saaiyaan' fails to tug your heartstrings. The background score of the film is passable.

In one of the scenes, Vidyut Jammwal's Devi Das tells a character, " Yeh ladai unhone shuru ki hai, isse khatam karne ka nasha mere sar chadha hai ." Sadly, his thirst for revenge isn't powerful enough to keep you invested for 154 minutes.

We give 2.5 stars out of 5 for Vidyut Jammwal-Shruti Haasan's The Power .

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Colin Farrell unravels mystery of the missing woman and himself in neo-noir 'Sugar'

Scott Simon

Michael Radcliffe

Colin Farrell patrols Los Angeles in style as private eye John Sugar in new series, Sugar . Sugar/Apple TV+ hide caption

Colin Farrell patrols Los Angeles in style as private eye John Sugar in new series, Sugar .

Colin Farrell has been in Hollywood long enough to know a few things. Like how to choose a role, what makes a character tick and even the city of Los Angeles itself. He navigates all that and more in the new series, Sugar on Apple TV+.

Farrell plays John Sugar, an LA private eye with a passion for classic cinema and a knack for violence, albeit reluctantly. He tells NPR's Scott Simon that like his character, "films have been a visual accompaniment and a psychological and emotional accompaniment" throughout his life. The series leads him on an investigation into a missing woman from Hollywood producer royalty that brings him close to the dark underside of the city and his own mysterious demons.

Colin Farrell spoke with Scott Simon on Weekend Edition Saturday about what makes Los Angeles an appealing setting, movies that play in his own head and and humbly having choice as an actor in Hollywood. Hear their conversation at the audio link, and read an edited transcript below.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Scott Simon: Why did you want to play John Sugar?

Colin Farrell: Initially because I heard it was shooting in Los Angeles (laughs) and that was the initial attraction, truly. I spent a lot of time, Scott, on the road and anywhere between 5 to 8 months of the year. And I have kids and so it gets a bit ... I feel a bit long in the tooth to be spending so much time away from home. So that was the initial attraction. And then when I read the material, I read the pilot and it became apparent to me pretty quick that not only was it being set in Los Angeles, but if you've seen the show, Los Angeles is very prominent. It's very much a character and very much what John Sugar, the character, projects his idealism about the world and about movies and and the kind of cultural importance of films through the lens of Los Angeles as a living, breathing, undulating city.

Help us understand what amounts to the art house cinema he has playing in his head, of classic film clips. And, inevitably, I wonder if as a kid growing up in Castleknock, Ireland, you used to play film clips in your head, too?

I did. They were a little bit more contemporary clips that I played in my head. They were a little bit more in the vein of the Back to the Futures and the E.T.s and the early Spielberg stuff: Jaws and Close Encounters. But films have, as music also is for many of us, films have been a a visual accompaniment and the psychological and emotional accompaniment for me through my life. So, you know, John Sugar, he has an innocence to him, a purity to him. And he leans into old films as kind of a reference for how the world works. And he just loves it as well. He's just charmed by the old world.

Colin Farrell teaches his new furry friend Wiley about the classics in Sugar . Sugar/Apple TV+ hide caption

Colin Farrell teaches his new furry friend Wiley about the classics in Sugar .

Look, he's not Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade . John Sugar, in one 15-minute span, he speaks Japanese, Arabic and Spanish. He dresses in classy suits. He drinks hundred-dollar shots of whisky without blinking. And by the way, he says he's metabolically incapable of getting drunk. He throws around the Benjamins, as we say, and he's fighting some kind of health challenge. Is he the real mystery here?

Yeah, there's obviously, Scott, there's the two mysteries at play. There's the case that he is, you know, as often happens in narratives born of the genre that this show explores. There is a case at the center of the show that begins to get under the protagonist's skin. And it begins to become threateningly more and more and more personal to his well-being, to his mental well-being, his emotional well-being, and his physical life. And then there is this parallel mystery, which is who is this man and where does he come from? And why do the declarations he makes about not liking violence and not liking hurting people, but he's so proficient at it, apparently from the opening scene in the show, all those questions. He was both, when I read him, Scott, a really vague character in regards to the information that I had on his background and also very specific in regards to his proclivities and his abilities and his behaviors. So it was a bit of a mystery for me as well because when we started filming, we really only had the first two episodes that were really marked out and a lot of it was almost building a plane mid-flight.

What was it like to work with Fernando Meirelles? The great Brazilian director. I think City of God is probably still his best known film.

Did he do The Constant Gardener as well?

I believe he did, yes. One of my favorites films, too, yeah.

Did he do that? God, such a ... Yeah. Fernando Meirelles was amazing. Amazing. Conventional reason could say this story is set in LA, LA is a prominent character in the narrative, and we should have somebody who knows the city, and understands. ... We had the total opposite. Fernando has, through his experience as a filmmaker over the last 30 years, he's visited LA from time to time and had a couple of screenings and a few interviews. He's never lived in LA. He doesn't understand the city. I'm living in LA 25 years, and I don't understand the city, and I mean that as a compliment. But he came in with child's eyes and he was really, really curious. And he was really curious about the kind of chasm between those who have and those who don't and the absolute kind of decadence and affluence of certain parts of the city and the kind of more working class, hardboiled aspects of other parts of the city. And I just felt like I was on a journey of exploration with him. But within the structure that we had, it was as loose as it could possibly be. And Fernando was always saying, you know, he wanted it to feel like jazz, to feel as much like it was in the moment, as improvisational as it possibly could. And and it felt like that. So he was wonderful, man. He was wonderful, playful. Playful.

Colin Farrell unravels the mystery in Hollywood and himself in Sugar .

You've gone back and forth in much of your career between blockbusters and then artistic projects. Like maybe The Banshees of Inisherin , for which you were nominated for an Oscar. How do you decide what to do?

Depends, really. I have done through the years jobs that were predominantly, of course, for the money and to be able to provide and all that stuff. And I'm also fortunate enough, like a kind of fortune that is a very, very, very low percentile, which is just having a bit of choice. It's not like I can do anything I want. There's plenty of directors and scripts that go to other actors, of course, before they come to me, and it'll always be that way. But I have a really lovely little bit of choice as well. There are times where I have two or three things on the table, and that's kind of really uncommon. And it's something that is indefinable really, Scott. You read something and honest to God based on wherever you are on that day, the sleep you had last night, the relationships and how they're going in your life. Wherever you are in life, you'll read something and it might not on the surface seem like it's reflective of anything that you can recognize you're dealing with in the present. But something about it will either irk you or provoke you, or please you or make you uncertain or whatever it is. So it's that kind of thing, you know, it really is. And I just love doing different things.

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