Censor (2021) 9/10
This is a spoiler free review
Prano Bailey-Bond’s much-awaited debut psychological horror is a brilliant, powerful and chilling film about repression, the nature of violence and horror cinema itself. Enid Baines is a dowdy, hard-working British film censor during the 1980s Video Nasties moral panic. After Enid’s parents officially declare her mysteriously missing sister Nina dead, she is drawn towards horror director Fredrick North’s oddly familiar films whilst battling a media storm around a film she approved that allegedly inspired a recent murder. Honestly, I feel like this movie was incubated in a lab especially for me – video nasties mythology, Lynchian touches, giallo vibes, a rad soundtrack and a psychoanalytical concept smorgasbord – and I certainly wasn’t disappointed. Niamh Algar is excellent as the repressed and traumatised Enid and there’s some great supporting turns from Michael Smiley (always a joy when he turns up in any movie) as a sleazy film producer and Danny Lee Wynter and Nicholas Burns as fellow film censors. There’s an absolutely cracking, disturbing score from French composer Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Annika Summerson’s cinematography is wonderfully atmospheric and Paulina Rzeszowska’s dingy 80s production design is perfectly observed. The film is a loving tribute and thoughtful metacommentary on the horror genre and compels us to consider our own role as spectators and the uses of violence in cinema. I also appreciated how Censor neatly weaves the social and cultural context into the narrative (economic austerity, the power of the tabloid press, media moral panics – does this sound oddly familiar?) without being too heavy-handed. My only criticisms would be that I wished some frightening, gorier moments hit a little harder and I could have easily accepted an even longer running time, but overall this is a fantastic first feature from Bailey-Bond and heralds the arrival of an exciting, new talent in British, and hopefully international, horror cinema.
A Psychoanalytical Analysis of Censor
“People think that I create the horror, but I don’t. Horror is already out there in all of us. It’s in you.” – Frederick North
This analysis is full of mega spoilers.
Censor (2021) is a rich and wonderful film that is pure psychoanalytical catnip so I couldn’t resist writing a longer piece analysing some of the ideas that surface in the movie. Censor explores the issues surrounding censorship in art, but it also addresses the concept of self-censorship, specifically the problematic dimension of censoring aspects of one’s self and our traumatic memories. The movie skilfully plays with the multiple meanings of the word censor in order to illustrate this point. The most common meaning is of course a person whose job is to examine books, movies, etc. and remove parts which are considered to be offensive, immoral, or a political threat. However, psychoanalytically speaking, censor can also be an alternate name for the superego, the psychic agency that represses unacceptable notions before they reach a subject’s consciousness which comes into being as a result of prohibitions learned from childhood, parents, school etc.. This duality is embodied by the film’s protagonist, Enid Baines, a BBFC censor who censors herself through repressing the narrative of her own troubled past.
The film posits that Enid’s elemental trauma stems from the disappearance of her younger sister Nina when they were children alone in the woods near their home. Following this event Enid experiences a form of dissociative amnesia (memory loss caused by stress or trauma) which prevents her from being able to recall the events of that fateful day. Clearly Enid’s amnesia leaves her with a deep sense of guilt because not only was she unable to protect Nina, she cannot even remember exactly what happened to her sister, who remains missing to the present day. As though she is trying to make amends for the failure to protect Nina, Enid becomes a meticulous and obsessive film censor so she can keep others safe from what she perceives as harmful, upsetting aspects of society. It is notable that Mary Whitehouse, the conservative activist and all-round mad bat (who popularised the term ‘video nasty’ and lead the successful campaign for these allegedly indecent films to be banned) makes a brief television appearance in the movie. Whitehouse is a perfect representation of the obscene nature of the superego as she was a self-appointed authority figure who delivered judgement and made impossible and unattainable orders in the name of ‘moral decency.’ It is extremely telling that Enid appears to be mimicking Whitehouse’s appearance with her huge glasses, weirdly old-fashioned clothing choices and even a string of pearls – literally embodying the pearl-clutching stereotype. Akin to Mary, Enid has an uncompromising attitude towards her role as censor and she tells her more liberal colleague Sanderson that they cannot afford to make mistakes. Therefore, once she (incorrectly) believes her decision to pass the movie Deranged leads a man to murder his own family (aptly known as the Amnesiac Killer), she spirals into a breakdown because, according to her strict world view, she has failed. It is at this point that the censor persona she has constructed really fractures and so does her ability to censor her own past/desires.
However, even before the Deranged incident, it is clear that Enid is a deeply troubled and mentally fragile individual. Apparent fragmentary recollections of Nina’s disappearance are littered throughout the film and function as a type of Freudian primal scene for Enid. The primal scene usually refers to a child witnessing an event which creates a sense of fear, distress and confusion and, if not resolved adequately, it can be absorbed as a defining traumatic moment which negatively impacts a child’s development. Freud also describes the primal scene as an ‘overwhelming unknown’ which the child cannot fully process and leads to conversion symptoms and obsessions in adult life. Early in the film fellow censor Anne casually mentions that she must leave work early because it is her sister’s birthday, a comment which greatly perturbs Enid and hints at how strongly she is haunted by her traumatic experiences. Later she meets her parents for dinner and they present her with Nina’s death certificate in an effort to find closure. Enid’s mother notes ‘I don’t want to grow old waiting for a happy ending that might never come’ which is a sensible and understandable sentiment. However, Enid’s parents do not comprehend that the death certificate does not provide satisfactory closure for Enid and only adds to her sense of guilt about her sister’s disappearance. Enid is clearly not comfortable with accepting ambiguity, which is also reflected in her only ostensible hobby – finishing neat and tidy crossword puzzles. Her parents want to move on, but instead of allowing Enid to fully process the situation, they choose to sweep it under the carpet and an emotional wall is built higher between them.
Enid’s mother does take pains to explain to her that they do not blame her for Nina’s disappearance, however in a dream sequence (the film’s only jump scare) Enid clearly connects her mother’s grief as being her fault. It also becomes clear later that Enid’s father still holds plenty of repressed anger and resentment towards Enid. He accuses her of being too headstrong and doing ‘whatever you wanted’ when she was a child. During the flashback sequence in the woods, she also appears pretty domineering towards Nina, although it is not clear if this is just a reflection of guilt or a realistic representation of what happened. The father’s suggestion that Enid was too reckless and her uncontrolled desire lead to disaster helps to explain why Enid is so emotionally and sexually repressed now. Perhaps she believes that if she loosens up and pursues her desires freely she will become dangerous or cause harm to others again. However, despite Enid’s best intentions, this continued repression paradoxically leads to the final explosion of uncontrolled violence and descent into psychosis. It’s also notable that during the viewing of Fredrick North’s film Don’t Go into the Church, it’s the first time we see Enid react viscerally to something she’s watched at work. She sees (or reads into the film) the same scenario that lead up to Nina’s disappearance which causes her to vomit. It is made explicit that Enid does not have a partner and refuses any form of sexual contact or intimacy, so the title of North’s film is perhaps an allusion to sexual repression if we view it as a reference to marriage.
The viewing of the Frederick North film sets in motion a chain of events which lead Enid back to a cabin in the woods scenario that appears to mirror her primal scene/traumatic childhood memories. Enid infiltrates the set of North’s new film believing that his leading actress Alice Lee is actually the grown-up Nina and she must save her from being murdered by North and his on-screen villain The Beastman. Enid sees this as her opportunity to finally protect Nina, receive redemption by bringing her sister home to her parents and create an idyllic happy ending. Enid confronts a camera-wielding Frederick North (a presence reminiscent of the Mystery Man in Lost Highway (1997)) who asks her to perform in a scene which effectively functions as a recreation of the site of her original trauma. The film is cleverly ambiguous about whether or not this is a sinister recreation of what actually happened to the sisters or just that Enid has read her own trauma into a coincidental piece of fiction. Either way, by returning to the cabin in the woods Enid transfers her own trauma into this fictional realm and creates a phantasy space in which to play out her own psychodrama. This could be a radically liberating moment and an opportunity to achieve abreaction (the releasing of repressed emotions about a previously forgotten event), but it ends up being an Antichrist (2009) ‘exposure therapy gone awry’ moment.
Enid enters the cabin in the woods armed with an axe ready to save her sister but is surprised when she is embraced lovingly by The Beastman and he urges her to kill Alice Lee/Nina. This moment represents an attempt to access and accept the reality of her flaws and dark side, but Enid refuses and instead kills the Beastman with the axe. For Enid the Beastman is symbolic of everything that is wrong in society, but this is a false perception. In reality he is just a man, an actor and a beloved friend. Enid misrecognizes the threat and in doing so causes real harm by killing an innocent man. She confuses cinematic fiction with reality which diverts her from confronting the real source of terror – herself. As if to further stress this point, the Beastman collapses into a television set and the Videodrome-esque vaginal axe wound campily exclaims ‘I am the horror.’ North’s artistic philosophy also explicitly speaks to this dimension during his earlier pep talk with Enid when he notes ‘People think that I create the horror, but I don’t. Horror is already out there in all of us. It’s in you.’
Sadly, the opportunity to face this radical truth and experience a moment of authentic emotional honesty (and with it the potential to become self-aware and heal) does not occur. This is the fundamental tragedy of Enid’s predicament she cannot admit to herself that she is a normal, flawed human being who may also have the capacity for physical or symbolic violence. Instead, Enid blames North and his films for her actions, kills him and then retreats further into full-blown delusion and psychosis once it becomes clear that Alice Lee is definitely not Nina. Enid cannot accept fault and must maintain her sisterly protector/censor role at all costs (in that respect Enid reminds me a little of Miriam from Violation (2020)). In psychoanalytical terms, it’s almost as if there is such a surplus of superego it denies and represses any Id-like impulses to the point of a psychotic break.
In the film’s final sequence, Enid’s reality has completely fractured and she enters a bananas ‘perfect’ fantasy world (the car radio tells us that video nasties have been eradicated, the crime rate is zero, the streets are safe, employment is at a record high…). Enid drives ‘Nina’ to her parent’s home in an apparent attempt to recreate the VHS cover she saw at Gerald’s Videos (tragically called The Day the World Began) and return to a pre-lapsarian family idyll. This is a visually and aurally overwhelming coda which saturates the cinematic phantasy space recalling Blue Velvet’s (1986) uncanny opening scenes. However, reality cannot be denied and the jagged editing effectively highlights the true horror of Enid’s behaviour – Alice is clearly terrified and Enid’s parents are completely horrified. In this respect, the ending is reminiscent of Enid’s celluloid sister Maud’s fate from Saint Maud (2019) that other recent, brilliant British horror film featuring a woman in the grip of psychosis. Much like the dodgy video shop copy of North’s movie Asunder, Enid has chosen to tape over the ending of her own story with an escapist fantasy narrative. But of course, as Slavoj Zizek says, a fantasy realised is total nightmare.
What did you think of Censor? Do you agree with my interpretation or did you see something completely different? Let me know in the comments below or send me a cheeky email/DM!
Let's Scare Lauren to Death 