Censor (2021)

A film censor starts investigating a “video nasty” that awfully resembles the case of her little sister’s disappearance.

Hauntingly realistic psychological horror that crawls under your skin. And so does the dramatic subplot that drives the story to its unexpected turn. What is it that we see? What is it that we want to see? How do we perceive what we see? Why do we perceive it the way we do? What is actually real? Keep these questions in mind… but not just throughout the film.

For those who are unfamiliar with the logline’s term, “video nasty” is a colloquial British term regarding mostly low-budget films that include, among others, explicit gore and pornography. Even though they did have quite an impact in the UK, the impact was not as severe as the film makes it to be. Having said that, Censor will have an impact on you. For a film that deals explicitly with gore, it becomes the definition of psychological horror. Adapting her short film Nasty (2015), in less than an hour and a half, writer/director Prano Bailey-Bond fully develops Enid’s obscurity, deliberately misleads you using restrictive narrative – Enid’s perception – and presents to you the darkest side of cinema that becomes cult for the hardcore fans and appalling taboo for the masses. I’m not going to divulge anything about the narrative, watch it and pay attention to the minor details that explain what happens in the end. It makes it somewhat obvious but not overly obvious and, to a certain extent, open to interpretation.

From a filmmaking point of view, the Dutch angles, the transitions between locations, but also dark reality and nightmare, and the match-cuts that signify/betray that dark, distorted reality… reveal the behind-the-curtains (unconscious?) side of our lives that we fail (or choose to) not to look. Ultimately, the film tackles how we perceive films and their role in our society. Is it film imitating life or the other way around? Are films to blame for the release of our darkest side? What about for what we do to one another? I guess the answer can also be found in the role of art in our lives. Other than Bailey-Bond, my round of applause goes to all cast and crew who believed in her project, and especially to Niamh Algar, who nails her part, Annika Summerson’s cinematography, and Mark Towns’ editing, who has been behind equally amazing horrors, such as The Ritual (2017) and St. Maud (2020).

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