Premise: A movie censor in 1980s England becomes obsessed with finding a woman from a movie who she thinks looks familiar.
On a simple aesthetic level, Censor is pretty unimpeachable. It's designed as an homage to the "video nasties" of England in the 80s - C-grade horror movies that pushed the level of acceptable violence and were often banned in the country. It creates many authentic-looking nasties and becomes one itself at times. The whole movie exists (in my memory at least) under a thick fog, in underlit rooms, or at night. Star Niamh Algar looks plucked right out of that era. So, the experience of watching Censor was exactly what it promised.
I was a little more mixed on the story. It left a little too much uncertain for my taste. So, Niamh Algar plays Enid, who works as a movie censor. She also has a tragic past. Something about a sister who went missing when they were kids, and Enid seems to remember more about what happened than she lets on. When a movie she reviews for work eerily lines up with her traumatic childhood memories and stars a woman who kind of looks like her sister, she becomes obsessed with learning more from that filmmaker. Clearly, her head isn't in the right place. And the movie becomes about how far gone she is. The deeper she goes, the more the lines blur between this being a movie about "video nasties" and being a "video nasty". By the end, the film gives all the answers I absolutely need to know, but it leaves a few too many coincidences unexplored. You know, even a broken brain is still right twice a day (or something like that).
Censor is the debut feature from of Prano Bailey-Bond. She has a clear command of tone and vision in this. While it falls short of some of the other Sundance horror breakouts of recent years, she's definitely a filmmaker I'll be looking out for in the future.
Side Thought: Is it just me or does Niamh Algar look like a lost Gummer sister?
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment