Movie Breakdown: Censor (Noah)
Pre-Screening Stance:
Censor has the “darkness-of-the-80s” look down pat – low, flickery fluorescent lights, shadowy alleys, the harsh crackle of VHS grain – and I love the “darkness–of–the–80s” look. A lot. Also, Britain’s harsh film rating system in the era and the introduction of the, ahem, “Video Nasties” is a fascinating part of cinematic history. Wrap it up in a horror package and I’m totally in.
Post-Screening Ramble:
Censor is a film that pushes hard to be very, very, very strange but ends up being a familiar story shot from an off-kilter perspective. Enid (Niamh Algar) is a censor for the British film industry in the ’80s of Margaret Thatcher. It’s her job to watch gruesome, and sometimes amateur horror flicks and either suggest the cuts to make them appropriate for public consumption or ban them outright. She’s a little off. Her sister disappeared years earlier and her life has been reduced down to doing what she can to protect herself from the grief. Mainly, she spends her days tersely talking to her co-workers and obsessing over crappy horror films and her sister. After finding a film that strangely mirrors her own horrific experiences she becomes obsessed with the director and starts spiraling into madness. Algar might be a good actor, but the character of Enid starts so removed from any emotion she has very little space to grow in any direction and the character becomes fairly one note. The movie itself doesn’t hit a lot of different notes. It’s grim and gritty in a beautifully harsh sort of way, but it never really moves in any other direction, until it completely unravels at the end, jumping from atmospheric chills to abject madness in a few brief moments. And I think it’s because Censor wants to be transgressive but the script is fairly mundane. It wants to – and at some points succeeds – in roiling itself in the filth of these “Video Nasties” but only really nails the energy of the era, not the actual feeling.
One Last Thought:
Michael Smiley plays a sleazy exploitation producer who gets his and when he does it’s a pretty awesome shitty death scene.
