Censor

I really wanted this to be great. And if you were, like me to believe the press then the director is on a par with Kubrick. But, alas it's all just hype, hype, hype. And that is so damaging for the director it's untrue. Do the press not care about her career. Many of us now feel conned by being lured in to believing we were getting something expectational and sadly all we got was something mediocre.

Censor isn't really a horror, nor is it a good slasher. They also tried to build up Giallo-like atmosphere, but I'm not sure what this has to do with anything, since it does not correspond well with the time period the film is set in.

The story is very short and basic, there's minimal acting and not that many details to make it interesting. There are no supporting characters, the main lead isn't particularly interesting as well. The ending is predictable and understandable (no ambiguity whatsoever).

It looks like they have used the setting only to oversaturate the film with hipster imagery, never going further with it.

Censor isn't a bad film, it just isn't interesting or engaging, they never try to show anything besides the visuals that serve no purpose other than eye candy for the hipsters (or how are these called today, IDK).

"Censor" should on paper be a film that I would be instantly in to. Set in the "Video Nasties" time in the UK, it's about the story of a video censor and her descent into madness.

Similar stories have already been told in the likes of Berberian Sound Studio or Evil Ed - and while Censor has some brilliant moments of atmosphere and a haunting ending, the whole thing didn't really fully come together for me in the end.

I think maybe the psychological state of our protagonist was not established enough to fully believe her transition, so it all felt a bit too forced.

But there's still a lot to admire in Prano Bailey-Bond's debut feature, it just wasn't as engaging as I had hoped.

The story is not so engaging, and it didn't go anywhere. The ending is confusing too.

The synopsis for 'Censor' sounds ridiculously good. It's such an intriguing idea for a movie. Sadly, as is usually the case, the reality isn't quite as entertaining as the concept. The movie started off well and actually had a really gripping and clever set-up period. But as the film went on it chose to go further and further down the strange and bizarre route and it just lost me.

This is a debut effort for filmmaker Prano Bailey-Bond. He shows some real promise. Even though I didn't love the direction the film chose to go in, the writing was still very sound. At least he picked a route and went with it convincingly. Usually the dialogue in these low-budget, debut films is noticeably bad, but here it was well above average I would to say. It was interesting and felt natural. There's certainly some talent behind the scenes here.

The film is short at only 84 minutes and it moves a long at a reasonable pace, so you are never caught checking your watch. There's enough to like here for people to enjoy, and it's possible some people will prefer the plot-path the film decided to go down more than I did. I will give this one a light recommendation. It might just pleasantly surprise you.