Censor (2021)

October 18, 2021 5:05 AM

Film censor Enid 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 [redacted]
posted by kittens for breakfast (8 comments total)

Now streaming on Hulu.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:06 AM on October 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

This was so good and so trippy. I really liked it. They nailed the time period.
posted by Kitteh at 7:50 AM on October 18, 2021 [3 favorites]

I may be going out on a limb here, but I feel like many of the horror films I've seen directed by women this year -- Saint Maud, Promising Young Woman, The Stylist, Censor -- are about hyper-competent women who are gaslit into insanity. It's almost as if -- but no, no, no, that can't be it.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:26 PM on October 18, 2021 [7 favorites]

I liked this one, though it starts to get a little predictable and I wish it had gone more weird.

Niahm Algar has a powerful face.
posted by fleacircus at 7:46 AM on October 20, 2021

If anything, I think I would have liked it more if it (or at least Enid) had gotten less weird. I think the first half is much stronger than the second; I would have loved it if it had continued down a more weird procedural track, but maybe that's just me. On the whole, though, I think it's a good film; style for days.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:41 AM on October 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

I think we actually agree lol.
posted by fleacircus at 4:19 PM on October 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

Half In The Bag review
posted by Kosmob0t at 1:07 AM on October 21, 2021

For me, this movie is about a person swimming in trauma put into a spectacularly bad situation. It's all PTSD, desperately looking for an outlet, finding none, then stumbling down the route societally suggested.

The prevailing idea of the times, echoed and emphasized in Enid's profession, is that repeated exposure to simulated violence traumatizes people and activates dangerous tendencies in them. Who was more traumatized than Enid? Who had watched more videos depicting horrors?

Around this time, the idea that she might have mistakenly approved a film that motivated a grisly murder activates her guilt over her sister's disappearance. What if, like this killer, she is the villain but cannot recall somehow?

She is unable to find a way out of her trauma, since her sister's disappearance seems never to be solved. And so, she takes the suggested path, becoming unhinged and following the violent echoes from the mountains of horrors she has watched on screens.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:36 AM on December 14, 2021