Power Out
2023 · 8m
Directed by Lauren Keating
Genres: drama, horror, thriller
Tones: dark, melancholic, tense
On a stormy summer night when the power goes out, a young woman, her mother, and a terrifying event from the past converge.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Power Out plays it straight—haunted-house trauma redux, power cut as metaphor, a storm outside that mirrors one inside. It's competent horror that knows exactly what it's doing, which is precisely why it doesn't interest me.
Keating situates herself firmly in the American gothic lineage, particularly the domestic-horror strand of the past decade; the editing rhythm between past and present suggests a careful study of cross-cutting tradition, even if the bones remain familiar.
What locks this is the choice to let the power outage be genuinely silent—no score, no ambient dread, just the absence—which forces every mother-daughter exchange into unbearable intimacy; that single constraint transforms a premise anyone could pitch into something that feels excavated.