Censor

 Year:  2021

Director:  Prano Bailey-Bond

Screenplay:  Prano Bailey-Bond and Anthony Fletcher

Starring:  Niamh Algar, Nicholas Burns, Vincent Franklin, Sophia La Porta, Adrian Schiller, Michael Smiley

Running Time:  84 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Britain, the 1980s:  The country is in the midst of a moral panic over so-called "Video Nasties".  Enid Baines (Algar) is a film censor who takes a hard line on cutting or banning violent films.  One day Enid is assigned to classify a horror film called Don't Go in the Church which brings up distressing memories of her sister's unexplained disappearance when they were both children.  Enid becomes convinced that one of the actors in the film is her sister, and as she investigates finds the line between reality and on-screen illusion dangerously blurring.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s home video took off in Britain in a very big way, partly due to the amount of people who were being laid off from their jobs at the time, finding themselves with redundancy money and an unexpected amount of time to fill.  All the films shown in cinemas had to be classified by the British Board of Film Censors (latterly the British Board of Film Classification), but video was exempt from that, and so a lot of films that had either been cut, banned outright, or had never even been submitted to the BBFC were released uncut to buy or rent on video, often with lurid covers.  Before long, the Conservative government, right-wing media and other self-appointed moral guardians whipped up a furore over what they called "Video Nasties" resulting in notoriously strict censorship in Britain.  This is the context in which Censor takes place.  It is an effective, quietly disturbing horror film, set mostly in dull, half-lit offices and homes, with characters dressed in beige and cheap suits.  it also captures the look of the cheap horror films that were often deemed "video nasties".  Niamh Algar gives a powerful performance as Enid, who views her job as censor as a moral mission to "protect" people.  She has few if any friends, and Algar does very well with a mostly silent performance, particularly as her stern detachment starts to crack.  Prano Bailey-Bond directs with real style, although the film leaves us with more questions than answers, the ambiguous conclusion refusing to tie up the loose ends, a choice which may be tantalising to some viewers, while frustrating to others.     

Niamh Algar in Censor