It’s London in 1985, an odious harpy is PM and there’s strikes going on constantly, people were angry and scared. They turned to VHS for entertainment and escapism, the horror market bloomed.

Unrated horror meant kids were watching Cannibal Holocaust so the BBFC decided only they could save the nations children from cannibals in the jungle and return them to watching a mouse set fire to a cat and beat him with a rolling pin like god intended or seeing miners getting beaten bloody on the news.

Some movies that would be considered tame by modern standards were consigned to the banned list and not available until the late 90s. if you wanted to see The Exorcist it was your friends dads shaky pirate VHS copy with obscure subtitles or it was nothing.

Who were these random nobodies to decide what people could or could not watch?

No-one EVER killed because of a movie, they killed because they were killers.

End of story.

Enid Baines is one of the great moral guardians, so she thinks anyway. She lives a drab little life in her drab little 70s build flat watching the gargoyle Margaret Thatcher on TV and doing crosswords because of the trauma she still suffers after her little sister, Nina, went missing as they played together in a forest.

Her parents have her sister formally declared dead as it’s been two decades since Nina’s disappearance and this starts to give Enid anxiety attacks and flashbacks which are worsened when her boss tells her a movie she passed for release is being blamed for a murder of a family and someone has leaked Enid’s name publicly.

We see she is called at home by members of the public who verbally abuse her as well as being harassed by the press as she enters work.

Work is also fraught with tension as her colleagues now ignore her and talk about her behind her back. One bright spot for me (less so for Enid) is Michael Smiley sliming around in a great little small role as a sleazoid producer. He comes on to her very strongly before asking for Enid, personally, to censor a movie he’s produced.

Enid finds said movie eerily familiar as it features two little girls playing a similar game she and Nina played in the woods. A nightmare about the movie leads Enid to watch more of the directors work. The only movie she can obtain is a pirated copy in poor condition however the female lead, Alice Lee, appears to be a now adult Nina.

Her parents think she’s gone mental but Enid sets out to track down all involved with the movie, including a showdown at the filming set where she finds Alice Lee.

Some people are going to hate this movie and I can see their point but I don’t share it, it’s almost as surreal as Neon Demon at points and there’s no spelling things out although you’d need to be a special kind of stupid not to get the ending and what it’s conveying.

I liked this movie, I didn’t think I was going to and for a while I was impatient to get to the end. When I feel this way I often do skip to the end and then go back and watch it properly. Not ideal I know but I like to be honest. Somewhere at the halfway point though the movie grabbed me properly and I didn’t skip, I just let it go to it’s natural conclusion and I’m glad I did. It’s a movie better appreciated on a second viewing and the last 5 minutes are some of the most beautifully shot, scored and genuinely horrific I’ve seen for a while.

Who are these people to decide what I can see indeed.