Censor Review: A Horror-Homage to the Video Nasty That Isnt Quite Nasty Enough – Variety

The premise of Prano Bailey-Bonds Sundance Midnight selection opener is so strong that its little wonder the film cant quite live up or perhaps down to it: In a Thatchers Britain riven by tabloid-fueled video nasty hysteria, a young woman working for the national censorship board is assessing a horror flick, when it triggers sudden flashbacks to a traumatic, amnesiac episode in her own life. Given the ongoing debates around censorship and its trendier 2020s companion, cancellation and the relationship between screen violence and its real-life counterpart, not to mention the grungy exploitation aesthetic of the no-budget films it references, Censor dangles the prospect of topical, ticklish provocation that will prove offensive to some sensibilities. And offense, in a time of pandemic numbness, is tantalizing in itself: at least youre feeling something.

Initially, at least, Censor teases in that direction. The witty opening segues from snowy, degraded-VHS versions of classic Film4 and BFI logos into a scene that wouldnt look out of place in any one of a hundred 80s horrors. A terrified teenage girl runs through a forest, tortured by filtered lighting effects, strobey editing and a Carpenter-esque score. A hand clicks a clunky remote and the frame freezes, as the two censors placidly watching, Enid (Niamh Algar) and Sanderson (Nicholas Burns) discuss whats to be done with the gorier parts (that we sadly have not been shown). The decapitation is fine because its ridiculous, claims Enid, but the eye-gouging will need to be cut. Sanderson demurs, pompously citing Shakespeare, Homer and Buuel as forbears in ocular assault, but Enid holds her ground. After all, shes already salvaged the tug of war with the intestines and only trimmed the tiniest bit off the end of the genitals.

This archly amusing exchange tells us a lot about Enid, a bookish type whose prim blouses are always done up to the throat and who takes herself and her job which she sees as protecting a vulnerable public very seriously. Which only adds to her dismay when she learns that a killing has occurred recently in exactly the gruesome manner of one of the films she was responsible for sanitizing. Worse, shes been personally identified as the censor involved, and in a painfully plausible early example of misdirected public outrage, tabloid hacks are now encamped outside the office and anonymous callers spew hate into her home phone.

This is promisingly juicy stuff, even though its quickly apparent, from the meticulously beige 80s styling, DP Annika Summersons careful, muted compositions and Enids solitary, mournful characterization, that Bailey-Bond, co-writing the script with Anthony Fletcher, has designs for a more artful, far less creaky movie than the ones Enid watches at work more Berberian Sound Studio than Last House on the Left. And though self-appointed morality wonks like Mary Whitehouse and, of course, Maggie Thatcher drone away on the telly and lurid headlines scream from newspaper stands, soon the background hum of social paranoia the films most original aspect dies back and a more rote genre-horror storyline comes into focus. A shame, when self-righteous, panicky public scapegoating is more compelling and frightening than the mystery of what happened in the woods one day a couple of decades ago.

Enids drab, sexless lifestyle echoing the slasher archetype of the final girl is at least partly due to her terrible guilt at having blanked out the details of a childhood incident in which her sister Nina went missing, never to be seen again. So the censor is self-censoring, on some subconscious level, but who is she protecting this time, and from what?

Her parents decide at long last to have Nina declared dead, which further destabilizes the already fraying young woman. So its hard to say if its real or imagined when she starts to believe that her sister lives on, as an actress (Sophia La Porta) who shows up in the latest trashy offering from local horror maestro Frederick North (perhaps a reference to notorious British serial killer Fred West). Oleaginous producer Doug Smart (played oleaginously by Michael Smiley) might be able to provide some answers.

There are some nice subtle flourishes, as when a projector beam turns red implying the bloodiness of the image indeed Summersons excellent framing and moody color blocking is a sophisticated pleasure throughout. And with Saffron Cullanes precise, subtly heightened 80s costuming, and composer Emilie Levienaise-Farrouchs cleverly referential yet non-derivative score, Censor is a stylish calling card for all involved, one that certainly demonstrates an impressive level of directorial control for a debut filmmaker.

But that control does sometimes feel like constriction: Until the very end, when we finally get a ridiculous decapitation, a nastily Cronenbergian talking wound and a properly deranged nightmare coda (a testament to Mark Towns punchy editing), it doesnt really feel like Bailey-Bond is having as much nasty fun as she could. Its an irony that Censor would probably have passed even Enids moralizing eye without cuts, and that a movie set during the Ban This Sick Filth moment should be neither sick nor filthy enough to run the slightest risk of being banned. Between this and 2015 short Nasty, Bailey-Bond clearly has great affection for the genre, but if a love letter to the cheapie slasher is going to reach its addressee, better it be written in warm, sticky blood.

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Censor Review: A Horror-Homage to the Video Nasty That Isnt Quite Nasty Enough - Variety