Halsey did not have to go this hard for what is technically an “album companion piece,” and yet here we are: a sumptuous, vicious, gothic fairy tale about rape, power, pregnancy, and a woman who poisons her king and still somehow isn’t the biggest monster in the room.
Directed by Colin Tilley and written by Halsey herself, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power is a period fantasy horror that looks like Marie Antoinette got drunk, binged Game of Thrones, discovered feminist theory, and decided to fake her death and live deliciously. It’s bloody, beautiful, occasionally bonkers, and very much not for anyone who thinks pregnancy is just soft lighting and baby showers.
A Queen, a Monster, and a Mirror Walk into a Palace
At the center is Queen Lila (Halsey), a young queen who:
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Is not of royal blood
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Has just conveniently lost her husband, the king
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Is pregnant because he raped her
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Is already halfway done with everyone’s nonsense
When she returns to the castle, the king is dead and the court is trying to decide what to do with this inconvenient woman who technically has the crown but not the pedigree. Lila stares into a mirror and sees Lilith—her double, separate, feral, and very much not interested in decorum.
Lilith is the manifestation of everything Lila is not allowed to be: rage, hunger, agency, violence. She lurks in reflections, rubs Lila’s stomach like she owns it, and eventually steps out of the mirror like, “Hi, I’m your intrusive thought and also the plot.”
We’re not in subtle metaphor territory here. This is a film where your inner self literally stabs you in the womb to jumpstart your emotional arc. Honestly? Respect.
Royalty, Misogyny, and Bad HR Policies
Lila’s world is not just patriarchal; it’s weaponized against her on every structural level.
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She’s not royal by birth, so the court views her as a placeholder.
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The Aristocrat and Matriarch treat her less like a queen and more like a leaky vessel for potential heirs.
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Once her pregnancy is discovered, they immediately reduce her to two functions:
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Survive long enough to produce the child
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Then die on schedule
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The plan is charmingly medieval:
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If the baby is a boy: he gets raised in court, groomed for power.
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If the baby is a girl: she gets killed. Efficient, misogynistic recycling.
Lila is sentenced to die after giving birth, as if she’s just an unpleasantly opinionated incubator whose warranty is about to expire. It’s horrifying, but the film plays the court’s cruelty with such icy matter-of-factness that it veers into dark comedy: this is exactly how they expect the world to work, and they’re offended she isn’t more grateful.
Pregnancy as Body Horror (Feat. Witchy Lamaze)
This is one of the few films that absolutely commits to pregnancy as horror, not soft-focus miracle.
Lila’s journey includes:
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Urinating on seeds to test if she’s pregnant (a historically rooted detail, by the way), then watching them sprout like nature itself just confirmed the worst news.
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Seeing her reflection overridden by Lilith, who caresses her stomach with an unsettling, half-maternal, half-predatory possessiveness.
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Fleeing bathhouses and mirrors because every surface reminds her that her body is no longer just hers.
Her visit to the witch is one of the film’s best sequences: a muddy, earthy, candlelit encounter where an older woman touches her swollen belly and starts a kind of medieval Lamaze lesson. It’s absurd and tender and unnerving all at once. The witch is the only one who treats Lila’s pregnancy as something that belongs to her, not the state. Naturally, the patriarchy later burns her alive. HR really needs a word with them.
“He Raped Me, I Poisoned Him, Anyway—Moving On”
The king’s death is revealed in flashback, and the film doesn’t flinch:
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He assaults Lila.
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She poisons his wine.
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He dies almost instantly after impregnating her.
It’s dark, blunt, and the movie does not pretend this “evens things out.” Lila’s power is reactive, born of survival. The court doesn’t care about the truth; they care that their golden boy is dead and his wife has the nerve to still be breathing.
Lila’s contentment at his funeral—a small, bitter smile in a sea of black-clad grief—might be the most satisfying shot in the film. It’s not triumph; it’s relief with a side of “I’d do it again.”
Costume Drama, But Make It Vengeful
Visually, this thing is gorgeous. The costumes are outrageous in that “this is not historically accurate but I don’t care” way:
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Corsets, crowns, and gowns that look both angelic and weaponized
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Heavy fabrics, sharp silhouettes, and colors that telegraph Lila’s shifting internal state
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Halsey’s real six-month pregnancy giving everything an uncanny, painfully tangible weight
It’s a world where the aesthetics of power and privilege are literally stitched into the clothes, and watching Lila move through it—drowning in silk one moment, running barefoot and bloodied the next—is one of the film’s great pleasures.
It’s like someone gave a sadistic fashion house a trauma brief and said, “Go nuts.”
The Guillotine, the Fantasy, and the Woman in the Mirror
By the time Lila gives birth with the witch’s help, she has:
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Killed her rapist husband
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Been sentenced to death
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Fled her own castle
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Almost drowned herself and her child, then changed her mind at the last second
Of course the Aristocrat finds her. Of course they burn the witch. Of course Lila wakes up back in the castle, in a cell, guards mysteriously dead (hi, Lilith), and walks toward the guillotine like a condemned saint.
The final stretch is brutal and beautiful. Lila:
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Finds her baby in the nursery
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Holds the child as if this is the first moment of real love she’s allowed herself
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Walks to the guillotine and hands the baby to a maid
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Fantasizes, in an aching montage, about a quiet, peaceful life she could have had with her child
For one fleeting moment, we see the “other timeline”—the one where Lila survives, loves, parents, exists as more than a womb and a scandal. She smiles at the thought.
Then the blade falls.
It’s abrupt, cruel, and exactly on theme. In this world, women like Lila do not get happy endings. But the film isn’t quite done.
Enter Lilith: “Anyway, I’ll Take It from Here”
After Lila’s death, Lilith steps out of the mirror for good.
She glides through the castle:
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Past the dead guards
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Past the dead Aristocrat
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Past the wreckage of the old order
She picks up Lila’s crown, regards it, and instead of putting it on in some cheesy “now I rule” gesture, she simply walks away.
She’s not here to sit on their throne. She’s here to outlive it.
It’s a beautifully spiteful ending: the system kills the woman who tried to survive within it, but can’t kill what she unleashed. Lila dies; what she embodied—rage, refusal, the refusal to be just a vessel—keeps walking.
Somewhere, beyond the castle and the corpses, a baby grows up without a mother but with a legacy of divine, murderous defiance. Motherhood, but make it cursed and oddly hopeful.
Final Thoughts: Gothic Pop, Bloody Heart
If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power is not a traditional movie. It’s a 50-ish-minute visual opera stitched around an album, narrated more by emotion and imagery than by dialogue. If you need clean plot beats and character arcs with neatly labeled motivations, you may end up yelling at the screen.
But as:
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A visual moodboard of feminist rage
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A body horror fairy tale about pregnancy and power
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And a “what if the queen was the monster you needed her to be” fantasy
…it absolutely works.
Halsey throws herself into it—literally, emotionally, hormonally—and Colin Tilley frames her like a tragic saint, a reluctant tyrant, and a final girl who didn’t survive but did, somehow, win.
It’s messy, maximalist, and gloriously petty toward kings, courts, and anyone who thinks a woman’s body is their kingdom to rule.
If you can handle a bit of blood with your baroque visuals and don’t mind your horror laced with pop-star melodrama and a guillotine, this is one hell of a coronation.
