"Censor" a meta video-nasty nightmare

Censor (2021)

Horror movies have always been the evil stepsister of cinema, allegedly powerful enough to rot the brain and breed violence in those who watch them. The cause and effects of media and real-world violence can be tabled for a whole separate conversation of presentation not necessarily being endorsement, but British horror film “Censor” actually gets the conversation going. In her first feature (co-written with Anthony Fletcher), writer-director Prano Bailey-Bond explores processing on-screen violence, particularly from the splattery “video nasties” of the 1980s, and how one's own brain can edit the truth in the thick of grief, and it is a stylish, effectively insidious meta nightmare nastily sprung to life.

Enid (played by Niamh Algar) is a film censor for the British Classification Board, making conservative cuts on hardcore exploitation pictures to secure a rating. When comparing notes with a colleague, she says, “I’ve salvaged the tug of war with the intestines. Kept in most of the screwdriver stuff. And I’ve only trimmed the tiniest bit off the end of the genitals, but some things should be left to the imagination.” She is so devoted to protecting what society consumes, especially when the entertainment she censors is deemed irresponsible and potentially dangerous during Margaret Thatcher’s England in 1985. Everyone erupts into hysteria when a man goes off and kills his family in the same gruesome method as in a horror picture Enid approved. A journalist traces it all back to Enid for letting the film pass. To put even more stress on her shoulders, Enid has not yet made peace with the disappearance of her sister at age seven. When her parents want to put the tragedy to rest and file a death certificate, Enid’s guilt worsens, desensitizing her to the violence she watches every day. The final nail in the coffin before Enid’s reality collides with her work is when “Don’t Go in the Church,” a new film by prolific provocateur Frederick North, enters the screening room and triggers her memory. Could the actress, Alice Lee (Sophia La Porta), actually be Enid's younger sister Nina?

Much more than just a homage to a particular kind of VHS-era movie, “Censor” is a to-the-bone story about trauma that still safeguards art over censorship. In terms of tone and a surreal narrative, it repeatedly recalls Peter Strickland’s “Berberian Sound Studio” to the point of both films probably making a disorienting vortex-into-madness double feature. While Strickland’s film was esoteric and worked more successfully as a meticulously crafted mood piece, writer-director Prano Bailey-Bond and co-writer Anthony Fletcher edge closer to an emotional catharsis, as cockeyed as it may be. Giving a guarded but emotionally uncensored grounding force of a performance, Niamh Algar (2021's "Wrath of Man") fully commits to Enid's tragic descent that blurs video nasty and nasty reality; it’s heartbreaking to see Enid go beyond the point of no return, and Algar sells it. Michael Smiley also effectively plays slime incarnate as Doug Smart, the producer on the splatter film that sends Enid spiraling.

“Censor” does struggle with story momentum, but it’s deliciously era-specific—back when smoking cigarettes was allowed indoors and on trains!—and all creepily leads to an atmospheric, ambiguous finale of bloody axe murders and sunshine-happy smiles. The final back half is when the film kicks Enid’s story up a notch, even as it adopts a dream logic, becoming more abstract and psychologically disturbing (and altering aspect ratios). Just like Enid, one may lose their way in tracking what is going on here, and that feeling of incoherence seems to play right into Prano Bailey-Bond’s point. Let the lurid, hallucinatory mood wash over you and see where it takes you.

Grade: B -

Magnet Releasing released “Censor” (84 min.) in theaters June 11, 2021, followed by an on demand release on June 18, 2021.