‘Censor’, directed by Prano Bailey-Bond, is a brilliant debut, a creepy homage to the horror genre and the British video nasties of the 1980s.
Censor, a horror debut co-written and directed by Prano Bailey-Bond, is one of this year’s great horror movies. This is, in a sense, the year of great horror films directed by women. French director Julia Ducourneau won the Palme d’Or this year for her outstanding body horror Titane, a rare feat for the horror genre as well as for women directors. To celebrate this “female horror renaissance,” the streaming platform MUBI is showing horror films directed by women this October in the U.K. Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censor is part of the series, and is premiering on MUBI for Halloween. Censor is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S. Censor is a brilliant debut, a creepy homage to the horror genre and the British video nasties of the 1980s, bringing to light the controversy that surrounded these films at the time. It is a slow-burning film that unfolds like a psychological thriller at first until it plunges head first into horror. Enid (Niamh Algar) is a film censor in 1980s Britain. She spends her days watching horror films, or what was referred to as video nasties (highly violent low-budget exploitation films distributed on video tape).
