Macabre…ish Horror Review: Censor

Censor, 2021/ 84 min

In 1985, Enid Baines (Niamh Algar), is a film censor, specifically for those considered video nasties. It is her job to censor and cut graphic and gruesome moments out of movies that are deemed too graphic. This, due to the rise in horror films that are blamed for an increase in violence, the effect is banning, censorship and prosecution of film makers.

Shortly after a man murders his family, a tabloid blames a film that Enid approved months ago. She is named in the paper and begins receiving threatening calls.

Enid is also requested to view a banned movie by a veteran horror filmmaker, Frederick North (Adrian Schiller) that closely parallels her memories of how her sister, Nina (Amelie Child Villiers), went missing years earlier.  She is shaken up, spooked even.

The lead in the film resembles Nina and Enid becomes obsessed with finding and meeting this director and is told he us currently filming a sequel to the film.

Enid somehow believes her sister is not only still alive but in need of rescuing from the ‘exploitation film industry’. When she ends up on set of the sequel and assumed to be an actress, she kills an actor (and director) to keep him from ‘killing’ her ‘sister’ who is really an actress named Alice (Sophia La Porta), who she begs her to please be her long lost sister.

After fainting, Enid awakes with a tv remote in her hand and she pushes a button, she then has a happy vision of and ending with, her sister…sort of.

This is an English psychological horror set in the 80s. It gives more of the appearance of being graphic and gory without actually being so. This was like watching a woman traumatized by her job and the loss of her sister, slowly unravel. It also uses cinematography (red, purple lighting) much like Mandy.

This was trippy, sad and oddly disturbing in the way in which Enid, lost her mind.