The Power (2021)

Spooktober Challenge 2025

Premise: It’s 1973 and Val’s just starting a new job as a nurse. Things are not going great so far though: her boss is a really mean lady with way too many rules, the hospital she’s working at is kinda huge and spooky and to make matters worse, all this is happening during some programmed nightly power outages so the place can get pitch black. Oh, and Val is scared of the dark because something really bad happened to her when she was a kid at an orphanage.
On the bright side, she’s kinda managed to become friends with a little foreign girl, also an orphan. And there’s this young hunktastic doctor that’s probably the only person who’s ever smiled at her (at Val, I mean).
Oh also the hospital is haunted.
Under 90 minutes? just a tiny bit over the limit.
Do they say the title? yes they do, after all the fact that they cut the power with those outages is a major plot point.

One sentence review: Surprisingly, at no point on this movie they go to the hospital’s morgue and that shows a lot of self-restraint.
Okay, more: It was a fun watch, it really helps that it’s basically 90 minutes long because at times the plot is spread slightly thin. The use of light and shadow is really cool, this is a movie that sometimes looks gorgeous. It also is a movie that at a couple of times tries to bite a bit more than it can chew and the resolution happens a bit too quickly for my tastes… but I can’t say that was a huge problem considering I just wanted to watch a period horror movie with some great atmosphere and no demonic posessions.
A simple way to improve it: a few less clunky jumpscares would help. Maybe replace them with hidden g-g-g-ghosts instead, that’s always a treat.

Trivia about the IMDb trivia:

The eerie, unsettling music played over the opening credits is a children’s choir singing a hymn, but in reverse.