SUNDANCE 2021 PREMIERE – Chosen specifically as a night-one midnight screener, Censor (2021) is directed and co-written by Prano Bailey-Bond as her debut feature film and is making its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Based upon the UK’s hardcore video scene of the 1980s, Censor is a mixture of reality and irreality that delves deep into the psyche of a traumatized woman and explores memory loss, indulgent violence, social morality, secret proclivities, and obsession.

To me, Censor was all about juxtapositions. The majority of the film was a heady psychology thriller, but given the nature of the protagonist’s occupation, the film is spliced with brief moments from exploitation films of the most violent sort, however, it is artsy enough to not seem like snuff. Director Prano Bailey-Bond gave me the kind of gore that made me say ‘wow, that is extremely dark’ because it is not just mindless, but rather more so methodical, like a surgeon slicing into my brain while conscious. Though its attempt at body horror didn’t go quite as grotesque as it should have for me, Censor gives Videodrome (1983) a run for its money as far as video-viewing induced, psychological breakdowns go.

Enid (Niamh Algar) works to screen films called “video nasties” for excessive violence and depravity to deny or approve them for public viewing. Though on the outside Enid has her life together, inside, she suffers the sorrow of her sister having gone missing during a tragic childhood incident. When she receives a video from an unknown director that seems to echo the same childhood incident that she can hardly remember, Enid becomes obsessed with finding the connection between the video and her missing sister.

This movie was a bit of a character study on the wallflower/unsuspecting-woman type trope, one in which director Prano Bailey-Bond and actress Niamh Algar, together, construct and then deconstruct, unraveling her character’s mind one lobe at a time. Algar’s emotive and layered performance builds in desperation and sees her character go from bad to worse, which helped to sell the film’s creative and eerie ending. Especially at the end, but often throughout the entirety of the film, Censor employs a surreal aesthetic, but it is always grounded in the reality of the existential dread of the protagonist harboring dark impulses within her otherwise un-impulsive visage.

Downright bone-chilling at times, first Videodrome, then The Ring (2002), and now Censor is here to make me fear the world of horrifying, snuff-like videotapes once again. It’s impressive in its boldness and creativity, reminiscent of the artistic choice found in The Florida Project (2017); a contrast of overly-sweet wholesomeness with a sinister undertone, something close to Lynchian only somehow even creepier–in short, I loved it. From the start, to its midpoint, until its end, Censor gripped me closer and closer and never dipped in pace or direction, and it is a recommended viewing out of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

CENSOR screened at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

7.75 out of 10