The Daily Stream becomes the Daily Scream for spooky season!
A horror movie explicitly about horror movies, 2021’s Censor is ambiguous, introspective, and thoughtful. Niamh Algar is deeply empathetic as a movie censor in 1980s Britain: she watches the most outrageous, most gruesome, most exploitative movies in order to decide if anyone else can see them. And they begin to have an existentially disconcerting impact on her mind and even her memories. In her feature debut, Welsh filmmaker Prano Bailey-Bond examines on multiple levels how we digest horror movies, how they linger with us and, dare we admit it, how they infect us. This unsettling movie is as weirdly uncomfortable as the genre should be, and rarely is. (Read my 2021 review.)
US: stream on Hulu and Kanopy; rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
UK: stream on 4; rent on BFI Player and Curzon Home Cinema; rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
See Censor at Letterboxd for more viewing options.
