Self-aware and meta horror is a notoriously tough nut to crack, but the smartest move co-writer and director Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censor made was by playing things completely straight and rigidly adhering to the rules of its own mythology, even though the premise leaves the door wide open for winking at the audience.
Set in 1985, Niamh Algar’s Enid Baines works for the British Board of Film Classification, which is essentially the United Kingdom’s version of the MPAA. During the decade, there was a crackdown on gruesome horror movies that became known as “Video Nasties,” and it’s our protagonist’s job to remove or ban violent content.
However, her personal and professional lives come crashing together when a film she approved is linked to a murder, before another screening offers up startling similarities to the unsolved disappearance of her sister when they were children. Naturally, this sends Enid down a dangerous, disturbing, and spine-chilling rabbit hole to uncover the truth.
Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an 89 percent score from almost 150 reviews, Censor didn’t quite parlay such overwhelming critical acclaim into tangible success, even if it did perform solidly at the box office relative to its threadbare budget.
Thankfully, Reddit remains a place where hidden gems are dusted off and shined back up, with the intensely unsettling psychological chiller the latest to be held up as an unfairly overlooked treat. It most certainly is, and with commenters immediately adding it to their watch-list, a second wind of renewed support could be on the cards.