Sundance Review: ‘Censor’
A haunting and hypnotic descent into madness with a powerful performance from Niamh Algar at its center.
A warning for extreme violence and gore preceded the Sundance world premiere screening of Censor, the debut feature film from Welsh director Prano Bailey-Bond, which is quite fitting considering the film’s subject matter.
Set in the 1980s, Censor centers on Enid (Niamh Algar), a highly strung film censor still reeling from the mysterious disappearance of her sister. After viewing a “video nasty” – a British term used to refer to a low-budget horror exploitation movie – that bears a striking resemblance to the circumstances that led to her sister’s disappearance, Enid tries to track down the film’s elusive director in an attempt to find out just what happened to her sister.
On a visual level, Censor is a complete masterpiece; Bailey-Bond, working with production designer Paulina Rzeszowska, cinematographer Annika Summerson and editor Mark Towns, has created a technical marvel that is both glorious and disturbing, avoiding the derivative neon-drenched aesthetic of most ‘80s-set films for a more grainy, muted approach not unlike that of the movies Censor references throughout its runtime. The third act in particular, an ultraviolent fever dream of giallo proportions, is straight out of one of the “video nasties” Enid spends her days combing over, glitchy transitions, gratuitous gore, low budget visual effects and all. It’s a shame the film’s narrative aspects can’t quite live up to those elements.
The “video nasty” hysteria that took Britain by storm refers to the criticism received by low-budget horror and exploitation films from social commentators, religious organizations and members of the media, who all credited those films to the sharp rise in violent crime amongst youths in the early 1980s. By setting her film in that specific period, Bailey-Bond attempts to assess whether or not that argument holds any merit. Aside from one line spoken by one of the characters towards the end of the film, Bailey-Bond does not attempt to engage her audience in a larger discussion or draw any conclusions, with a specific plot-line assessing whether violent tendencies can form through a person’s consumption of media or whether they have always been there, lying dormant until they’re drawn upon, giving away to an open-ended ending, the likes of which have become all the rage in the horror genre these days.
Alger delivers a phenomenal performance as Enid, who may seem poised and collected on the outside but is suffering from years of unprocessed grief and trauma that color every aspect of her life. It is a complex tightrope walk of a performance, with Alger perfectly capturing Enid’s carefully constructed facade and misleading demeanor before they soon give way to a mesmerizing and intense showcase of fear, desperation and paranoia. The film at its best when its exploring her feelings of guilt when it comes to her sister’s disappearance and her desperation to search for answers. Elsewhere, genre veteran Michael Smiley cuts an intimidating figure as sleazy producer Doug Smart while Clare Holman and Andrew Havil strike a solid presence as Enid’s detached parents.
Bailey-Bond swings for the fences with Censor and she ends up being mostly successful, creating a haunting and hypnotic visual feast that also doubles as a scathing love letter to the horror genre, but she doesn’t quite stick the landing, sacrificing the film’s narrative substance in favor of style. However, the film is still more than worth a watch thanks to its intriguing premise and what will surely be a star-making turn from Alger.
Rating: 3.5/5
Censor premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival on January 28, 2021.