Censor (2021)

A video nasty within a video nasty within a video nasty, sort of. Prano Bailey-Bond’s fantastic debut feature opens with real life voice-over from news reports from the mid 1980’s, attributing societal violence to the video nasties of the time. Enid (a terrific Niamh Algar) works as a film censor cutting and passing or rejecting movies, the majority of them controversial. To call Censor a horror film is to miss the point completely, it’s an homage to the video nasty. The film really nails the feel of the era, and is set almost entirely at night. There are some welcome cameos from Michael Smiley as the creepy, sleazy Doug Smart, and it’s also great to see Felicity Montagu (her of Alan Partridge fame) and Nicholas Burns (Nathan Barley himself) pop up throughout as well. Bailey-Bond is clearly affectionate towards her subject; there are also plenty of nods for video nasty aficionados to enjoy, especially visual clips of old VHS copies of Evil Dead and the like. Enid lost her sister at an early age; she disappeared in the woods one day whilst playing with Enid. Enid has struggled it ever since, frequently dreaming about it and believing that her sister Nina might well still be alive somewhere. Her life is thrown upside down when she thinks she sees her sister in one of the films she’s assessing, and embarks on a mission to track her down despite her rationality clearly in question. Censor is a terrific piece of work, and Prano Bailey-Bond is a massive talent to look out for in the future. 7.8/10