"Censor"
1985. When film censor Enid Baines (Niamh Algar) discovers an eerie horror that speaks directly to her sister's Debbie (Erin Shanagher) mysterious disappearance, she resolves to unravel the puzzle behind the film and it's enigmatic director Doug Smart (Michael Smiley); a quest that will blur the lines between fiction and reality in terrifying ways. The film takes pride in her meticulous work, guarding unsuspecting audiences from the deleterious effects of watching the gore-filled decapitations and eye-gougings she pores over. Her sense of duty to protect is amplified by guilt over her inability to recall details of the long-ago disappearance of her sister, recently declared dead in absentia. When Enid is assigned to review a disturbing film from the archive that echoes her hazy childhood memories, she begins to unravel how this eerie work might be tied to her past.
In writing a character like Enid, you need her to have enough deep flaws there to begin with to enable her to go on the journey she's going to go on. There's a lot of discussion in the development process about how cracked and how reliable she's to begin with, and where and when we start to see those little cracks emerging. Enid as a character is quite cold in a way, she's very closed off. Enid has an emotional journey throughout the film. "Censor" breaks down into worlds, so we've Enid's reality, the video nasties she's watching, and then the dreams, which is where the video nasties and reality start to weave together. The film fuses and weaves props, colours, locations etc from one world to the next. Even though we're going from one polar to another it's important that the journey feels fluid. She starts as someone that feels in complete control of her life and her work then by the end of the film she breaks through this psychological threshold into another world. It's an incredibly rewarding journey to go on, as this character. She's so extraordinary and even she doesn't understand everything she's experiencing. And as an audience you're on that journey with her of self-exploration. She brings an empathy to the character that makes the audience lean into her, that makes you feel for her. She's completely electric; you don't want to look away. The focuses on Enid's trauma and how to express that through the score. There's a version of this score that could be very 'Carpenter'-esque, really '80s' and synth-y. "Censor" creates something glorious, warm, everything Enid ever dreamt of, but underneath all this there's something really dark and painful. You feel how Enid feels in that moment. It's psychological, dramatic; but peppered with comedy; nuggets of light relief. Film is the art form that most closely resembles our dreams. Cinema can transport us. Watching films can be cathartic, that we can have a happy ending in films, even if that's not always the case in real life.
At the start you think 'OK, I think I know what this film is about' then you get to halfway and think, 'oh my god, I've no idea'. "Censor" is about 'The Hammer Horror' era. It's about the world of video nasties. Watching films like "The Evil Dead" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", but what went on around these films, socially and politically in 'The UK', is as fascinating as the films themselves. One of the things film censors looked out for at this time was blood on the breast, as they believed that seeing this would make men likely to commit rape. So any image of 'blood on breast' would be instantly cut from these films. They've to be both objective and subjective in their roles all at once, but what happens if the subjective element takes over? In the early to mid '1980s' when 'VHS' first came about there was a boom in low-budget horror being created, as these films could now go direct to video and direct to the home. There was no form of censorship in place for video as it was a new piece of technology; the films being censored were those screening in cinemas. So, off the back of this there was an outburst of social hysteria and moral panic, people thought that these videos were going to corrupt society and give birth to the next generation of murderers and rapists. At the same time, you've the backdrop of 'Thatcher', industrial collapse, job losses. It's really interesting, you've this rise in crime being reported, probably because there was a lot of poverty, and then there's 'VHS' and violence in film, the easy scapegoat for what was going on politically. There's a certain hypocrisy. It poses this idea that as humans we're so afraid of ourselves, like in some people's minds we're just one step away from becoming a murderer, as though you could just watch a film and your moral compass is completely thrown out of the window.
Steeped in glorious '1980s' aesthetics, "Censor" is a bloody love letter to 'The VHS Video Nasty' horror classics of the past. The film invokes imaginative worlds, fusing a dark vocabulary with eerie allure, revealing how beauty resides in strange places. "Censor" is a way to dive into some of these ideas, the idea of the moral compass, and how that fear of ourselves can be the most dangerous thing of all. The look of the film includes photography from 'The 80's' such as 'Martin Parr' and 'Paul Graham'. 'The Thatcher'-era look of 'Britain' bleak and muted. Then on the other end of the spectrum, films like "Suspiria" and "The Evil Dead", also Lucio Fulci films like "The Beyond", really lurid/vibrant colours. The censors office iis always an underground space. One of the inspirations, which might seem strange, is the rabbit warrens of 'Watership Down' with these whispering, haunting voices of other rabbits floating through the long tunnels. The film creates an underground warren of censors; a claustrophobic space, but rather than whispering voices coming down the corridors.
Written by Gregory Mann.
