Censor

I sat with this for a day before reviewing it, because I just wasn't sure how to feel about it. It's a movie with a lot of good ideas. It's a movie with an interesting concept. It's a well-acted movie. The problem is that the movie wants to show AND tell its story, and the two things conflict, ultimately leading to an ending that breaks the movie's trustworthiness entirely. The movie is about Enid, who works for the British Board of Film Classification in 1985, reviewing movies for approval, editing, or rejection. At this time, England had a level to their certification process called Video Nasty, which was an outright rejection of movies it considered so offensive, to show them in theaters or have the videocassettes for rental was illegal. She is prim and buttoned up, literally and figuratively; she is the strictest censor by far, and her outward appearance reflects it, wearing blouses that look straight out of Victorian-era London. She lives a cold, lonely life, mostly mourning her sister, who went missing as a child during an expedition together into a forest. Her parents want to declare her sister dead, but Enid doesn't want to let go. Her life turns upside down when she thinks she sees a woman who resembles her sister in a movie, which leads her down a rabbit hole. The first half of the movie feels a lot like 8MM. The second half, on the other hand, ventures into a surrealist nightmare of possible conspiracies and predatory directors of low-budget exploitation flicks that may or may not be killing off its stars. The second half feels like In The Mouth Of Madness. There's a strong case to be made for a really great movie here. Unfortunately, the problem of show vs. tell hurts this movie. The movie constantly shows us that Enid is a prim and proper, highly reserved woman who can't let go of her sister, but the movie TELLS us that her sanity is a powder keg waiting to blow. She goes from the former to the latter at the pace of flicking a light switch. There is no gradual descent into madness; it's a dive into the deep end of the pool, and while the movie wants to tell you it's more than that, what it shows you contradicts it. This internal struggle continues up to the end of the movie's mind-bending, reality-warping finale, where suddenly it shifts to be told strictly through Enid's now fractured point of view. But because we're left wondering how long she's been crazy, this leaves us wondering how much of ANYTHING she said, did, or saw was as we saw it. The movie itself becomes an unreliable narrator. Again, this wouldn't be a bad thing -- American Psycho does this to great effect. But American Psycho also lets you know all throughout the movie that things aren't quite right, from the "murders and acquisitions" misunderstanding, to the doorman not noticing Patrick dragging a body out of the building, to the "feed me a cat" moment. Censor doesn't do that; it shows you a movie, and then gives you an ending that says "yeah, about all that". It pulls the rug out from under the viewer, and then tells you the rug may never have been there. Also, for all the big deal about her being a censor is made, it never really factors in much. It's a vehicle to get her to see the movie. If the rabbit hole of the movie and the director and his filmography had been a deeper hole, it would've justified the premise. But as it stands, it's a contrivance that exists for easter eggs and plot convenience. She could've been a horror FAN and seen the movie at a theater, and the movie's course wouldn't have been affected one bit. There's a clever idea buried in here somewhere. It has a lot of good elements, but they're not assembled properly, and the movie is constantly struggling against itself. It's not an outright bad movie, and I can see why some people are putting it on best-of-2021 lists. But for me, all I see are missed opportunities.