Censor
The story of this year’s Sundance breakout and the most exciting British horror of 2021
WHERE? Tong Park, Bradford
WHEN? 24 October 2019
WHY? Because British filmmaker Prano Bailey-bond is making her debut feature, a 1985-set psychological horror set amid the social hysteria bred from video nasties. (And because Empire’s Kim Newman is an executive producer). The film stars Niamh Algar (Raised By Wolves, The Virtues) as Enid, a film censor looking for her missing sister after watching an eerily familiar horror film.
WHAT DID YOU SEE? A creepy, foggy, seemingly endless forest. “We’ve been to what feels like 200 [forests],” jokes location manager Joe Gradwell. “Prano’s dead specific.” Empire’s guided through the misty woods by producer Andrew Starke (Ben Wheatley’s longstanding collaborator). A wooden hut in a clearing shelters rusty hooks and a smashed TV set. Alarmingly, a prosthetic open chest cavity with its heart exposed lies on the ground outside. Empire’s encouraged to fiddle with the chest’s mechanics, and the heart begins to beat. “All the films that Censoris about use practical effects,” says Bailey-bond.“i love them.”
WHAT WAS BEING FILMED? When night falls, Algar and her co-star Sophia La Porta are filmed running energetically between the trees in long wigs and floor-length white dresses. Algar is visibly splattered with blood. At one point she has a fire axe clutched in one hand. In-between takes, the pair knock back fizzy vitamin tablets and dance to songs on Algar’s phone to keep warm. “I listen to music to get into character,” says Algar. “There’s been a lot of Radiohead on this playlist.” As if things aren’t spooky enough, the actress pauses our chat to point out the owls that can be heard overhead. “When I read the script, I had a great understanding of the character, but the locations, the set design, and the whole look and colour of everything surpassed all my expectations.”
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT? As Enid burrows deeper into the theory that her sister may still be alive, the boundary between reality and the shocking films that she regulates begins to blur. “I’m fascinated by our relationship with horror and the idea that we think we’re one step away from doing something terrible,” says Bailey-bond. “That’s what people were saying about these films: you’ll watch one and then go and kill someone.”
CAN WE EXPECT SHOULDER PADS AND BAD PERMS? Censor is set in the 1980s — a fertile time for horror movies — and Bailey-bond was keen for the film to reflect what Britain was really like at the time, rather than the usual stereotypes of the decade. “I didn’t want to use clichés like spandex and ghetto blasters,” she says. “I saw the films in worlds: the grey, real world that was Britain at the time, and then the video nasties that we created for the film were based on work by directors like Lucio Fulci, and there’s a dream inspired by Dario Argento.”