Censor

The opening credits of Censor set the scene beautifully. A montage of gore, made up from snippets from video nasties like The Driller Killer and Nightmares In A Damaged Brain playing out against the sounds of moral crusader Mary Whitehouse blaming them for all societies ills. England, a deeply troubled country in the early 80's was looking for a scapegoat to blame all it's social ills on and a few dozen horror films took the blame. 

Enid (Niamh Algar), working as a film censor (for the unnamed BBFC) is consumed by a job that's taking it's toll on her. All day she watches violent video tapes and helps decide if they will be banned or cut. She's too conscientious with her job and other censors are taking advantage of the fact, getting her to do their work, as they know she has no life to go home too. Outside of work she struggles with the fact that her missing sister has been declared dead, a disappearance that has haunted her since childhood. One that will continue to haunt her when a film called Don't Go In The Church arrives at the office and it's opening scenes strike a very familiar chord with her.

I really liked this. An 84 minute long, murky, messy look at a strange time in cinematic history lensed through the deteriorating point of view of a person with way too much weighing on her mind. It's at it's best in it's first half, mocking the pointlessness of film censorship, with Enid and fellow censor Sanderson (Nicholas Burns) going back and forth about how much eye gouging and intestine yanking is acceptable in a horror film, because you know, what if a child sees it and brings about the downfall of society. Then a murder hits the news, a murder blamed on a film called Deranged, Enid and Sanderson get the blame because they passed the film, albeit with cuts. The press whips up a frenzy. It seems hilariously far fetched. Until you realise it all really happened. Another scene with Enid in a video shop openly displaying the films she herself has banned feels like another kick in the teeth for her. Is the job she puts so much of herself into pointless? 

It seems to be going that way until she becomes obsessed with a film she's seen something seemingly impossible in. She delves into the film makers history, she's losing her reason and it's here the film really veers off course, slowly morphing into the type of film she regularly takes the scissors too. Director Prano Bailey-Bond has a keen eye for the aesthetics of horror (one scene of Enid walking through an underground tunnel is lit *exactly* like a 70's Dario Argento flick) and the film goes into atmospheric overload but like those cheap horrors it does go slightly off the rails too with what feels like a mess of mixed messages. Have the films messed with her head? Could censoring them be a good thing? Is it systemic misogyny to blame? The films she deals with are a cavalcade or rape and gendered violence made by sexist men like Doug (a slimy Michael Smiley) and Frederick North (Adrian Schiller), films decried as ridiculous in earlier moments but do they really have the power to corrupt and deprave (the immortal words of Mary Whitehouse). It brings things to a blurry climax that doesn't stand up well against the clever, cutting commentary of the first hour.

Niamh Algar though, wow, she's excellent here. A study of controlled, tightly wound stress that only needs the slightest touch to send her over the edge. She starts off mousy and ends up shrieking, the demarcation line between the two being a brilliantly delivered "I'll see myself out" in a moment that really stretches the film's 15 certificate. She's in nearly every scene, sadness etched across her but the standouts are a great, cringeworthy, intensely polite and English moment in a video shop and at the climax when everything spills out, years of repressed angst and anger, fear, rage and disbelief. It's acting that never seems like acting. Super stuff.

Censor is streaming online now if you use a VPN and will be hopefully hitting cinemas later this summer. Keep an eye out for it, especially if you've an interest in the era in which it's based.