Censor trailer: First look at video nasty film called ‘best British horror in years’

Film premiered in same festival section as Blair Witch Project and Hereditary

Jacob Stolworthy
Friday 21 May 2021 08:32 EDT
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Trailer released for Censor

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A new video nasty film branded “the best British horror in years” now has a trailer.

Buzz has surrounded Censor since its debuted at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.

The film premiered as part of the festival’s coveted Midnight section, which previously introduced the world to horrors including The Blair Witch Project (1999), Saw (2004) and, more recently, Hereditary (2018).

Directed by Prano Bailey-Bond, the film follows a film censor named Enid (Niamh Algar) who discovers a chilling link between a violent horror film and the disappearance of her sister years before.

Before too long, Enid finds herself on a quest to discover the truth – and the lines between reality and fiction begin to blur. To say anything else would be to spoil the film’s many surprises...

“Video nasty” is the nickname given to low-budget exploitation films released in the 1980s that were heavily criticised for their violent content. Such was their mythic quality that younger viewers would seek access to these films, some of which went uncensored for many years.

Niamh Algar as Enid in Video Nasty horror film ‘Censor’
Niamh Algar as Enid in Video Nasty horror film ‘Censor’ (Vertigo Releasing)

Speaking to The Independent ahead of the film’s premiere, Bailey-Bond said: “I definitely wasn’t going into this film to solve the subject of censorship at all,” she says. “It’s more like delving in and picking it apart a bit – and then probably coming up covered in guts.”

Censor will be released in UK cinemas on 25 June.

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