The horror genre continues to be one of the most unique genres in film. Many horror films are released every year that many casual cinephiles would run to theaters or streaming services to view. However, in almost every calendar year comes a few Indy horror gems that may not have the shine that films like A Quiet Place Part II may have, but that does not mean these films are not as good.

The first half of 2021 is no different from the release of Censor, one of this year’s Sundance Film Festival’s selections. A film that offers something far different and more unique by not harking back to horror films of yesteryear, instead of providing cerebral, meta-yet-direct protection of the genre from the often given ignorant criticisms about horror as a whole.

In Censor, Enid (Niamh Algar) is a film censor working in the U.K. in the mid-1980s whose job it is to go through movies, generally, those that would be dubbed under the infamous “Video Nasty” label that the British government created as a means to ban and neuter the gore films from that era. For those in the states, films such as Cannibal Holocaust would be a film that would suffer these types of review from censors during that era.

While tasked with watching one of the archived films, Enid’s childhood memories involving the disappearance of her sister Nina whose fate remains a mystery, jump to the forefront, leading her to attempt to figure out just how this movie might be intertwined with what happened in her past.

While the film’s premise would make cinephiles assume, the film is simply about film censorship in the 1980s. Prano Bailey-Bond’s vision is more prosperous as the film’s primary themes lie in grief and the consequences of self-guilt, and how that self-guilt could lead to a reimaging of our memories to disguise the actual trauma that lies beneath.  

What Bailey-Bond does so well is rather than fully explaining the events unfolding, Bond never fully dives into the supernatural but offers just enough hints of it to please both horror geeks and those more in line with usual narrative storytelling.

Thanks to Annika Summerson’s cinematography, Bond can tell his story stylistically with nods to the color palette and framework of horror’s past. While the film’s atmospheric horror is one of the film’s biggest strengths, Niamh Algar’s performance is one that folks will be talking about upon the film’s conclusion. Algar approaches the understanding in a naturalistic way that brings a feeling most horror fans do not have for censors – empathy. By the film’s end, you are rooting for Enid to unravel the mystery of her past. 

Those that have seen Saint Maud are sure to compare both films’ endings. However, Bond’s Censor’s conclusion leads to a self-examination of oneself and past skeletons in our closets that we’ve hidden while creating an absolute melancholy dream of a film that will go down as one of the year’s best horror films.

Magnet Releasing will release CENSOR in theaters on June 11th, 2021.