Film Review: Last Night in Soho
Edgar Wright’s gorgeously arresting Last Night in Soho flies off the rails
Edgar Wright’s decades-long tour of genres makes a no-frills horror pitstop in Last Night in Soho. A collision between past and present painted with the brush of giallo and other era-appropriate terrors, the film is a lush and arresting thriller…until it isn’t. Last Night in Soho soars in its first half with Wright’s signature craftsmanship and a pair of great performances from Thomasin McKenzie and Anya Taylor-Joy, but its final act is undone by its over-polish, toothlessness, and muddled pastiche. Minor spoilers ahead…
Starting what can only be described as a fevered tour of cheeky, frenetic genre deconstruction with 1995’s Fistful of Fingers, beloved filmmaker Edgar Wright has spent the last two-plus decades applying his brand of visual verve to everything from zombie horror (Shaun of the Dead) to heist action (Baby Driver). Now, with Last Night in Soho, Wright has crafted what is likely his most earnest film. Taking its foot off the satire pedal to deliver a sincere homage to giallo and psychological horror of eras past, Soho finds a bloody confrontation between past and present anchored by deft performances and a sumptuous palette, only to fly off a cliff when its dutiful and intoxicating reverence sours into ineffectual pastiche.
Last Night in Soho centers around Eloise Turner (Thomasin McKenzie), a meek Cornwallian country mouse who has finally realized her dream of attending fashion school in London. Obsessed with the 60s - its music, its style, its general joie de vivre - Eloise is tethered to the past in more ways than one: she’s gifted (or cursed) with a sixth sense, and she often sees apparitions of her dead mother who committed suicide years ago. When things don’t work out according to plan in the big city, she finds herself renting a neglected room off-campus from the acerbic Ms. Collins (the late, great Diana Rigg in her final role). Soon after moving into her new abode, Eloise starts having vivid dreams transporting her back to 1965 and into the shoes of Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), the room’s previous tenant, and a glamorously ambitious singer eager to rise to the top of London’s entertainment scene. Initially, Eloise can’t wait to fall asleep each night just to live vicariously through Sandie’s confident, stylish strides, but it isn’t before long that things take a darker turn: Sandie’s slick and charming manager, Jack (a smarmy Matt Smith), quickly reveals his true, violent colors and both Sandie and Eloise’s worlds are plunged into a neon-drenched nightmare.
“Soho [is]…anchored by deft performances and a sumptuous palette, only to fly off a cliff when its dutiful and intoxicating reverence sours into ineffectual pastiche.”
Last Night in Soho is the least “Edgar Wright” film of the esteemed director’s works. Gone are the rapid fire cuts and razor-sharp whip pans, and gone is the self-skewering humor of his famed Cornetto Trilogy; for the most part, Soho plays its time-jumping horror mystery straight. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as the question then becomes: Without his signature tools and winking wit, is the craft still there? The answer, fortunately, is a resounding yes.
If there’s one Edgar Wright throughline outside of his frenzied panache, it’s music; whether its his Sparks Brothers documentary or the diegetic accompaniments of Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim, and Baby Driver, Wright has always delighted in the marriage of the sonic and visual. Last Night in Soho is no different. Pairing Chung Chung-hoon’s electric cinematography with the sounds of the 60s, the film plunges its audience into a captivating time travel yarn. Even before Eloise takes her first fateful trip into the past, she’s bopping along to Peter & Gordon’s “A World Without Love,” and by the time Petula Clark’s “Downtown” is signaling Soho’s dueling realities - as Eloise’s own vinyl or Sandie’s sensual downtempo version - Wright has intertwined the two timelines with his meticulous eye, this time isolated from his typical winking comedy. It’s dizzying in effect: Eloise’s jaunts are seamlessly blended with Sandie’s experiences, with Eloise typically viewing events from behind a mirror’s reflection, but Wright also loves to show off - an introductory dance routine between Sandie and Jack is edited together with a flurry of quick-change match cuts, complete with dazzling transitions that will have you wonder more than once: “How did they do that?”
“…Wright has always delighted in the marriage of the sonic and visual. Last Night in Soho is no different.”
Last Night in Soho’s first half has a rocket-like trajectory. It’s a beautifully paced, encroaching nightmare that seemingly uses its influences to send a singular message: that oftentimes our attachments and obsessions with the past - whether through music, culture, or nostalgia - are shiny, gilded traps. The London of the Swinging 60s comes with a veneer of glitz, glamor, and liberation, but underneath it all is a seedy, violent place capable of inflicting unimaginable suffering. The script, written by Wright and Krysty Wilson-Cairns (1917, Penny Dreadful) employs a riveting economy to begin exploring this space, but unfortunately, the farther Last Night in Soho moves along, the faster it flies off the rails. Wright is clearly pulling influence from giallo and the psychological horror films of the 60s à la Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and other “woman on the edge of her sanity” paranoid thrillers, but he doesn’t have the gall to go to the truly dark places of the works he’s paying homage. There’s a transgressive, unsavory power to the of films that Wright is imitating, but he won’t even pretend to embrace their ingrained nastiness - over-polished, sanitized, and ultimately toothless, Soho’s fawning love letter to genre quickly curdles into shallow pastiche.
By the time Last Night in Soho’s final act rolls around, it’s completely lost its thread. Mistaking wishy-washy muddle for complexity, the film layers on twist upon twist upon twist, and none of them really work. The toxic men are scum, and they’re also not; Sandie is the victim, and she’s also not - it’s clear that Soho wants to paint portraiture in the grey while still keeping its finger on the scales towards feminist fable, but it only comes across as tepid and convictionless. As evidenced by the film’s rollicking and engrossing buildup, Edgar Wright is still the geek auteur that we know and love; however, it’s hard to recall the last time a narrative this promising devolved into something so hollow. Last Night in Soho isn’t the year’s worst film - far from it - but it is one of the most disappointing.
