The Power of the Dog premiered at the 78th Venice International Film Festival on 2 September 2021, where Campion won the Silver Lion for Best Direction.

Campion won Best Director, making the film the first to win only in that category since The Graduate (1967); its 11 losses tied the record for most in Oscars history.

[7] In 1925 Montana, wealthy ranch-owning brothers Phil and George Burbank meet widow and inn owner Rose Gordon during a cattle drive.

Humiliated and upset by Phil's behavior, Rose starts drinking, becoming an alcoholic by the time Peter arrives home for a break from school.

Later, in front of his men, Rose, and George, Phil makes amends with Peter, offering to plait him a lasso from rawhide before he returns to school.

Peter heads out on his own one day, finds a dead cow, and, after carefully putting on rubber surgeon's gloves he brought in his backpack, cuts off pieces of its hide.

While trying to catch a rabbit hiding in a pile of wood posts, Phil gashes his hand but declines Peter's offer to dress the wound.

Upon learning about Phil's policy of burning unwanted hides, Rose defiantly trades them to local Native Americans and collapses on her way back to the house.

Peter, who skipped Phil's funeral, opens a Book of Common Prayer to a passage on burial rites and reads Psalm 22 before stowing the finished lasso under his bed with carefully gloved hands.

In early 2017, writer-director Jane Campion, having just finished filming the second season of Top of the Lake, received a copy of Thomas Savage's 1967 novel The Power of the Dog from her stepmother, Judith.

[11] While working on the script, Campion maintained correspondence with author Annie Proulx, who wrote the afterword to a 2001 edition of Savage's novel.

[10] Cinematographer Ari Wegner and production designer Grant Major found an ideal location in Central Otago on New Zealand's South Island, months before the film's early 2020 start date.

[17] In February 2020, Thomasin McKenzie, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Frances Conroy, Keith Carradine, Peter Carroll, and Adam Beach were confirmed to be cast in the film.

[13] To prepare for the role, Cumberbatch researched the Lewis and Clark Expedition and worked for a time on a Montana cattle ranch near Glacier National Park.

[13][19][24][25] Director of photography Ari Wegner shot The Power of the Dog using two Arri Alexa LF cameras paired with Panavision Ultra Panatar anamorphic lenses, with a 2.40:1 aspect ratio.

[28] Period photographs from the Time magazine archives, Ken Burns's documentary series The West, and the works of artists Andrew Wyeth and Lucian Freud were additional points of reference.

[13] In inclement weather, Major and his team built the façade of the two-story mansion, a working barn, a cattle pen, and stockyards on location in time for the start of the shoot.

[31][32] Period-correct furniture was not readily available in New Zealand, so set decorator Amber Richards sourced most of the objects from various prop houses in Los Angeles.

[33] Greenwood wanted to avoid the "sweeping strings" typical of Westerns, opting instead to use atonal brass sounds to emphasize the "alien, forbidding" quality of the landscape.

"[34] As a result of the pandemic and the accompanying restrictions, Greenwood was unable to work with an orchestra and recorded many of the cello parts himself, layering them to achieve an orchestral texture.

The site's critical consensus reads, "Brought to life by a stellar ensemble led by Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog reaffirms writer-director Jane Campion as one of her generation's finest filmmakers.

[63] On 6 April 2023, it ranked 15th on The Hollywood Reporter's list of the "50 Best Films of the 21st Century (So Far)" and was called a "brilliantly uncomfortable chamber piece about corrosive masculinity fed by sexual repression" and a "psychodrama whose epic scope is echoed in its majestic landscapes".

Collider wrote, "Campion unravels an understated love story in the heart of the American west, and shows how forcing someone to conform can lead to tragic circumstances".