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Censor

  • ️Sat Jan 16 2021

Censor (Film)

Censor is a 2021 British Psychological Horror film directed and co-written by Prano Bailey-Bond.

In 1985, timid, strait-laced film censor Enid Barnes (Niamh Alger) is working during the height of the Video Nasties era. Through her work, Enid catches the attention of Doug Smart (Michael Smiley), a rather shady and sleazy film producer, who asks her to review a video nasty by the infamously eccentric director Frederick North, which he recently got the rights to.

The film, Don't Go in the Church, stirs up something in Enid, as it reminds her of strange and vaguely remembered events surrounding the mysterious disappearance of her older sister, Nina, back in Enid's childhood. She sets out to find the reclusive director and solve the mystery of her sister's whereabouts...

And then things go horribly, horribly wrong for her.

Tropes:

  • The '80s: The setting of the story is 1985.
  • Accents Aren't Hereditary: Enid's mother is Welsh. She speaks with a crisp English accent.
  • Aspect Ratio Switch: In the third act, the aspect ratio very slowly starts to shrink into 4:3, the aspect ratio of video.
  • Asshole Victim: Subverted by everyone except Doug, who is clearly a sleaze and seemed ready to rape Enid before she pushed him away from her.
  • Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: By the end, Enid. And probably quite some time before that - she clearly thinks that the connections she sees in Frederick North films are representative of actual events. Then again, they might actually be, if you assume Enid killed her sister.
  • Creator Cameo: Director and co-writer Prano Bailey Bond is the woman wearing a nightdress and completely covered in blood in the video nasty that Enid rejects.
  • Cutting Back to Reality: The final section of the film involves an incredibly picturesque sequence of Enid driving "Nina" for a reunion with their parents: the landscape is taken straight from the cover of the family movie showed earlier with everyone smiling, a rainbow in the sky and the car radio announcing the end of crime with the banning of all video nasties. Brief cuts of static break the fantasy to show that Enid has snapped completely and kidnapped Alice, who is screaming and desperately begging Enid's horrified parents for help. Of course, that’s assuming any of it is even happening…
  • Deliberate VHS Quality: The tapes that Enid watches are naturally 80s quality, although it's a mark of Enid's deteriorating sanity when it starts to slip into real life.
  • Ends with a Smile: The final scene of the film ends with Enid laughing as her parents and Nina beam proudly at her. It's a Slasher Smile, befitting the smile of a madwoman who murdered Frederick North and kidnapped Alice under a delusion.
  • Homage:
    • The two girls playing in the woods in Don't Go In The Church is a homage to The Blood on Satan's Claw.
    • Enid's stroking of the television after seeing Alice (or, she thinks, Nina) and the talking wound homage Videodrome.
    • Bailey Bond described other video nasty Axe! (also known as Lisa, Lisa) as a main inspiration behind Don't Go In The Church, and it receives a Shout-Out in the outfit Edith wears at the end - the white nightgown as she's in a full dissociative breakdown.
    • The ending — a bright and seemingly uplifting scene where the protagonist, after experiencing traumatic events at night in a dark, dreamlike world, awakens to a warm, happy morning in a colourful, perfect world allowing her to reunite with loved ones and go for a drive only for something dark and evil lurking underneath to make its presence felt, making it unclear precisely what level of reality she has found herself in — harkens to A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). While not officially one of the video nasties, it was certainly an iconic film of the slasher horror genre and was released only the year before the movie was set, making it a logical film to homage. The obvious difference being, of course, is that in the earlier film the protagonist was the Final Girl, and here she is the maniac killer trying to convince herself she is the Final Girl.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: When Doug seems about to rape her, Enid pushes him off her and...impales him on one of his awards through his head and out his mouth.
  • The Killer in Me: One interpretation of Nina's fate is that Enid killed her, as she is shown expressing similarly dissociative behavior to another murderer related in the background... and after killing people on-screen.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The final shot of the film has Enid directly looking at the camera and laughing. Cue the tape popping out of the VHS player.
  • Married to the Job: Enid constantly stays late at the job and never goes out. Her parents ask her hopefully about whether she's found a nice man, but she hasn't. When a co-worker asks her out, she politely rebuffs him.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: A very subtle one: if Enid really did kill her sister, then Don't Go Into The Church is either somehow magically depicting the murder, or is just very similar through coincidence or possibly Frederico North ripping it from the headlines. Given that nothing else explicitly supernatural happens in the film the latter is likely, but that would still be a hell of a coincidence.
  • Mind Screw: The second half of the movie. At best, it was All Just a Dream and overworked Enid is napping in front of her TV set. At worst, all of it happened for real, and on top of that, as a child Enid murdered her real sister. Or it's a meta-narrative akin to the ending of In the Mouth of Madness. Or some combination of those. Or something else entirely.
  • Moral Guardians: The film revolves around the (real-life) moral panic around video nasties. Enid herself is a moral guardian in both profession and nature. Of course, in this film it turns out it's the moral guardian we should be worried about, not the video nasty. Maybe.
  • Never Found the Body: Nina disappeared, and her body was never found.
  • Never My Fault: Enid. By the end of the movie, she refuses to believe that she's done anything wrong, blaming her violence on Frederick North after killing a man, even as he's demonstrably horrified at what she's done.
  • Ominous Television: Enid obsessively watches Frederick North's films while trying to unravel the mystery of her sister's disappearance. She also firmly believes that films drive people towards psychosis and violence.
  • Paper Tiger: Frederick North has a pretty scary reputation and Enid is afraid of him. He is visibly horrified by Enid's violence when she finally meets him. Justified, since he's ultimately just a filmmaker (albeit of rather lurid content), not the violent monster Enid is deluding herself into thinking he is.
  • Pastiche: The color grading and gradual descent into surreality calls to mind Mandy (2018). Or really, any Italian horror from the seventies - Argento, Fulci, Bava all used that Giallo-like lighting.
  • People of Hair Color: Invoked by Enid. She and Nina are both redheads, and Alice Lee's red hair leads her to conclude that Alice is Nina. She is not.
  • Phallic Weapon: The award that Doug falls on is phallic-shaped and provides a Karmic Death for the attempted rapist, even though Enid doesn't exactly wield it herself.
  • Protagonist Journey to Villain: The film depicts Enid's transformation from mild-mannered Moral Guardian to insane spree killer and kidnapper.
  • Repression Never Ends Well: Even before the increasingly traumatic events of the movie, Enid is clearly a very tightly buttoned-up person who gradually begins to express a much darker side. At least one interpretation of events is that her hatred of video nasties is a projection of her self-hatred towards her own murderous, insane impulses.
  • Riddle for the Ages: Whatever happened to the real Nina, we never find out.
  • Sanity Slippage: Enid gets progressively more unhinged as the movie goes on.
  • Shout-Out: It's a horror movie about horror movies, so a number of references to classic movies are to be expected. And some others, mind.
    • The film Evil Dad, a blink-and-you'll miss it video, is a clear reference to Evil Dead.
    • Don't Go In The Church sounds very much like actual video nasties, Don't Go in the Woods (1981) and Don't Go in the House.
    • Enid's white nightdress as she loses her mind in the climax is a direct reference to Axe (or Lisa Lisa).
  • Stress Vomit: Enid upchucks in a toilet (with visible content) after a viewing of Don’t Go Into The Church evokes an unpleasant memory.
  • Suddenly Shouting: One of the few times the film pulls a Jump Scare, it's Enid having a nightmare of her mother standing next to her, then suddenly turning and screaming at the top of her lungs. No scary faces, no make-up, no nothing - just an extremely angry elderly woman shouting.

    IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!

  • Token Wholesome: Deconstructed: the shy, buttoned-up, prudish and heavily-coded-as-virginal Enid is every inch the kind of stereotypical Final Girl-style protagonist you'd find in a horror movie made in the era it's set in... except it's heavily suggested that all these things are reflective of some deep-seated psychological issues she's repressing very hard. And if anything, depending on how 'real' the movie's events turn out to be, she turns out to be the maniac killer.
  • Too Good to Be True: Even without the glitch-cuts to what's heavily implied to be the (or at least a) much more horrific reality there's nevertheless something very... off about Enid's vision after she reunites with "Nina"; everything is unnaturally bright and warm, everyone is smiling in a way that's just a bit too happy, there's rainbows everywhere, and the news on the radio is claiming that banning video nasties has somehow ended all crime and unemployment.
  • Unreliable Narrator: Enid is one around the circumstances of her sister Nina's death, with the implication that she may be responsible.
  • You Hate What You Are: Enid hates video nasties and holds them responsible for the decline of society and murderous impulses, best exhibited by the Frederick North movie where the little girl kills the other. By the end of the film, Enid is definitely a murderer — and she may have killed her sister, too.