Sundance 2021: Censor

The moral panic of the video nasty era in the U.K. and the corresponding satanic panic of the ‘90s in the U.S. seem a quaint memory today. The democratization of digital filmmaking, wholesale embrace of the rougher-hewn cinema of the post-Hays Code era, and larger cultural trend away from puritanical cultural impulses have made the possibility that a film like The Evil Dead would be banned seem remote. But genuine, widespread concern over the effects these films would have on the nation's moral character were a reality. Writer-director Prano Bailey-Bond resurrects this churning milieu in her delightfully weird and compelling horror picture Censor, starring Niamh Algar.

Algar plays Enid, a film censor for the BBFC, the U.K.'s equivalent of the U.S.'s MPAA, in the 1980s who pores over the blood-choked gurgles and lurid titillation of video nasties, cutting and blocking the most heinous content she can find. She is entirely convinced of the necessity of her work, seeing herself as a guardian protecting society from murderous copycats. It is a position that, today, seems impossibly divorced from how violent media intersects with our lives in day-to-day society. But, Bailey-Bond wisely gives Enid an emotional anchor. We learn, early on, that Enid lost a sister, how long ago is unclear. But, what is clear is that the trauma of that loss has lingered, consuming her so fully that her diligent scrolling through reels of sanguine-red footage seems a sort of psychic quest to both free her of her guilt and tie up unresolved mysteries. Long after her parents have given up on ever seeing their second daughter ever again, they fear they'll lose their first to obsession and spiraling trauma. In fact, the halls of the censor's office, straight and cramped, dimly lit and echoing with the anguished cries of hundreds of scream queens being sliced and diced, seem a prison of re-traumatization. Enid starts composed, dissecting the films analytically where her colleagues' stomachs turn and churn. But, that facade of stoicism gradually chips away after she sees a young actress in a film that resembles her long-lost sister. Algar is wonderful here, balancing on a delicate tightrope of detached exhaustion and aloof professionalism, all the while managing to make the character feel believable and sympathetic.

The film's premise is hardly new. Other horror films have covered the same ground of obsession, identity, and unresolved trauma to similar effect—Denis Villeneuve's jaundiced Toronto tale of a mild-mannered professor's descent into madness, Enemy, comes to mind—but the particular influences that Bailey-Bond pulls from paint Censor in a different hue. In the post-screening Q&A session, she noted what a tremendous impact The Evil Dead had on her and there is a cute nod to that film here, but, aesthetically, Censor calls to mind the candy-colored gialli and fantasies of Dario Argento, particularly Suspiria, of Mario Bava, and of Lucio Fulci. Like the films of those Italian masters, Bailey-Bond relishes in the squishy textural detail of the images, artificial as they are. She also lights Enid's flashbacks and the films within this film with bright, bold primary colors, crafting surreal and often silly nightmares. And, this bright, carnivalesque sensuality contrasts brilliantly with the buttoned-up frigidity of Thatcher's Britain. The grey cityscape of London seems a world away from the video nasties being cooked up in shadowy corners of nearby forests and sequestered homes. 

Bailey-Bond isn't interested in just pointing and laughing at the absurdity of the moral panic of that era, though. The arc of Enid's narrative is a great deal more prickly and tangled than such a simple perspective would accommodate. Instead, Bailey-Bond admits that art inevitably does affect us. That's not to say that watching Halloween will turn you into The Shape, but we bring our own experiences and our own emotional baggage into any piece of art as an audience. This process of sorting through the messy areas of overlap and disconnect between our own lives and the lives we see flickering before us on a screen gives us the tools to deal with our experiences. But, it is up to us to work through those feelings in a healthy and productive way. Censor suggests that this doesn't always happen, but it is always up to us to never stop trying.