Review of Last Night in Soho
Last Night in Soho (2021) Dir. Edgar Wright
Last Night in Soho gets a UK home release on 31st January 2022.
With a door opening and a girl dancing to 60s hit “A World Without Love” by Peter and Gordon, Edgar Wright is a master of time and place and his new film brings you straight into a dark retro world in his new horror-thriller. The girl is Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie from M. Night Shyamalan’s “Old”) and her suburban home is the location for Wright to brilliantly use his skills with film music and dance (a la Baby Driver) to pull us into his vision.
Along with the song’s “Please lock me away…” lyrics, visions in fact become eerily prescient later on but we begin by following 60s-obsessed Ellie as she moves from rural Cornwall to busy London to become a fashion student. Unable to fit in with new University party-loving “friends”, Ellie soon moves to a flat run by an old lady (Diana Rigg as Ms Collins).
But one night Ellie dreams about a blonde woman in the 1960s (Anya Taylor Joy as Sandie) who falls for Matt Smith’s "manager" Jack and waking the next day, Ellie uses this as inspiration for her dress designs.
Further dreams see Ellie co-opt Sandie’s bouffant blonde-hair and throwback garments yet she is tormented by a shifty old man (Terence Stamp) whilst working part-time at a pub. And she is told her dead mother had mental health issues that Ellie may be experiencing herself which adds to her unease in the capital.
Wright has always had a flair for images and like Tarantino isn’t afraid to explore genre conventions and wears his influences on his filmmaking sleeve. Here, neon Italian horror Giallo lighting adds an exaggerated and OTT tone. The dingy modern streets are contrasted too with the lush crimson nightclub drapes and wardrobe pinks of a Connery Bond-era London.
This glamourous rose-tinted view reflects the immaculate life Ellie wishes she had, but before long the director begins to mix reality and fantasy where Ellie’s sumptuous dreams become a living nightmare.
Technically, Wright uses plenty of mirror images and long-takes to capture singing, dancing and the dual parts of Ellie’s waking and sleeping (?) life. With an audience similarly unsure as to where the line is drawn between the two.
With Matt Smith’s besuited teddy boy hiding a sleazier interior and Ellie’s increasingly unstable reality reaching a crescendo at a Uni Halloween party, visions of murder see Wright take us down a horror path. Sex work, bloody revenge and ghostly apparitions force the audience to guess what may be a recollection of history or an overactive imagination.
Wright infuses the film with classics tunes from the era including tracks by Dusty Springfield (a sultry acapella rendition is delivered brilliantly by Taylor-Joy), The Kinks, Cilla Black, The Who and many more. The film is far from perfect though. Some of the scenes play out as simply machinations of an intricate plot, and later sequences aren’t particularly scary and despite some twists and turns, it mostly plays out as expected.
Yet, Wright’s interesting direction, technical skill and a host of great performances from the lead and support actors make the film an immensely watchable affair, despite a slightly overlong runtime given its content. Although stronger-stomached horror aficionados will find it a lightweight exploration, Wright fans will lap it up. And McKenzie and Anya Taylor Joy’s magnetic mirrored performances make them a formidable downtown duo whose lives entwine in an excellent historical horror.
★★★★☆
Michael Sales
