 Decemberdike # 6
Censor (2021)
Set in 1985, the film follows a young woman, Enid, (Niamh Algar) who works for the BBFC basically censoring video nasties.
Director Prano Bailey-Bond introduces everything possible from the video nasties phenomenon of the time. Be it video shops selling uncut video tapes under the counter, the press hysteria regarding the films, even more press hysteria when a tabloid rag decides a man who murdered his family was influenced by one of the films Enid didn't cut - spoiler - He'd never seen it - then there's cult horror director Frederick North (Adrian Schiller) who harasses Enid for banning one of his films outright. A film that Enid thinks features her missing sister Alice, and this plot development takes over the second half of the film as she goes searching for North's filming location for his next feature in which Alice is supposed to feature for one final time.
I did wonder how much exec producer Kim Newman influenced the first half of the film centered around the nasties outrage but the second half is more a female centric character study and how Enid's psyche is affected by seeing the films themselves on top of her fragile feelings regarding her sisters disappearance.
Censor is an interesting and audacious film in the way it looks at video nasties. It looks and feels authentic of the period thanks to it's muted colour grades and also captures the authorities take on video violence - at one point Enid tells someone she's cutting and banning films to protect the British public. However Censor isn't the film to see if you want gory violence in the main although there is one scene in particular featuring Michael Smiley that's violently memorable. Yet as the film ended in a nicely peculiar way which certainly altered my perception of it's third and final act as it's murky line between fiction and reality finally dissolved completely, it felt like a piece of cinema that could have been so much bolder given it's context in what was a dark period for the British film industry.
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