Avis Metacritic

Welsh director Prano Bailey-Bond’s feature debut, Censor, is one of those horror movies that sticks with you well after the credits roll. That’s because it doesn’t follow the typical horror movie formula.

Censor is an impressive, visually-stunning, deeply disturbing debut from Bailey-Bond and a showcase for Algar, who gives a truly spectacular performance.

With production designer Paulina Rzeszowska and cinematographer Annika Summerson, Bailey-Bond creates something almost unbearably close and oppressive, like the bottom of a murky fish tank. It’s a very elegant and disquieting debut.

Debut director Prano Bailey-Bond crafts a stylish, effective horror that is both an homage to genre cinema of that period and a psychological dive into the combined traumas of grief and guilt.

Despite a striking production design and the strong performance by lead actress Niamh Algar, the narrative familiarity of the second half and restrained climax let the film down.

The movie shows the mark of a filmmaker in full command of vintage horror’s most disturbing strengths — and well-equipped to resurrect them.

Steeped in the gory look, grimy feel and transgressive spirit of the so-called "video nasties" from the 1980s, British meta-minded horror movie Censor offers an admirable pastiche, spiked with black humor.

It works as a loving homage to the era of slap-dash, go-for-broke ’80s horror, but it ultimately adds nothing to the conversation.

The tone oscillates between earnestness and mischief, a little uneasily. There’s a trippy, funhouse aspect to it which yields a couple of splattery punchlines, but it could have gone further in this direction

Censor is a stylish calling card for all involved, one that certainly demonstrates an impressive level of directorial control for a debut filmmaker. But that control does sometimes feel like constriction.