England, the 1980s: Film censor and professional prude Enid (Niamh Algar) is hard at work trashing the latest horror releases, snipping to bits anything she deems too much for the ignoramus viewing public to handle. When a particularly vile piece of video exploitation falls into her lap, she is consumed by it to the point of obsession. In Don’t Go into the Church, she finds what she believes is key to unlocking her own childhood trauma.
Prano Bailey-Bond’s psychological thriller has much to offer film historians and scholars of Britain’s well-documented Video Nasty era. This was a bleak time to be a fan of horror, and Bailey-Bond hones in on the era’s murk and grime, creating a world just as moody and atmospheric as the fictional ones Enid spends her time chopping up. Smoky screening rooms, dingy offices, and sleazy, condescending men (Michael Smiley and Nicholas Burns, very well cast) are the order of the day, navigated by an increasingly troubled Enid. Like 2012’s Berberian Sound Studio, it’s a movie about horror movies, shot and edited like a horror movie from that era.
As Enid, Algar delivers a powerful performance; tightly wound and controlled as the movie opens, later to fall apart and unspool in a plausible, very video nasty-specific manner. Sure, the so-called nasties were horrible, but it’s ultimately Enid’s own baggage that makes Don’t Go into the Church dangerous. Just as the puritanical hang-ups of Mary Whitehouse, The Sun and The Mail made the original video nasties so objectionable in the first place.
As is so often the case, it falls apart a little by the time the finale comes about – the taut, gripping story giving way to less disturbing schlock and gore – but its point is well-made. Mary Whitehouse most certainly would not approve.
CENSOR is released in the UK on August 20th
