Last Night in Soho

Rating

Director

Edgar Wright

Screenplay

Edgar Wright, Krysty Wilson-Cairns

Length

1h 56m

Starring

Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Diana Rigg, Matt Smith, Rita Tushingham, Michael Ajao, Terence Stamp, Sam Claflin

MPAA Rating

R

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Review

At what point do style and substance merge to make for a more tremendous product? Last Night in Soho makes the case for how to achieve it.

There are certain directors that you always expect a fascinatingly original premise from and each new project delivers even if the quality sometimes vacillates between projects. Edgar Wright is one such director. While most don’t remember his directorial debut Fistful of Fingers, his second theatrical release, Hot Fuzz, set him on a road to fame among fans of British comedy. With that film and the remaining two pictures in his Cornetto trilogy, he established his bona fides.

Set in modern London, Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) is a student fashion designer who’s made the journey from small town England to the big city to pursue her dreams. One night, in her dreams, she walks into the 1960s and the body of Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), an up-and-coming chanteuse who ends up in the wily grasp of promoter Jack (Matt Smith) who convinces her to take on work at a local men’s club where she becomes stuck. As Eloise revisits this dream over successive nights, she begins adapting her own personal style based on Sandie’s influence and it ultimately bleeds into her fashion designs.

However, all is not the glossy dream world she believes it to be as she begins to see fractures of her own reality, the past blending into the present, and she starts to suspect that Sandie’s boyfriend may have murdered her. She also guesses that an old man (Terence Stamp) at the bar she begins working at may be the real Jack, which fuels her speculations. Eloise decides to attempt to unravel the mystery while her own psyche starts to splinter.

The film’s production is gorgeous as Wright’s films have become known for. Embodying the glamour and grit of the 1960s and London’s sex trade of the period, Last Night in Soho is a visual wonder further enhanced by Chung-hoon Chung’s photography using mirrors to reflect Eloise’s dream self and putting her into an otherworldly frame of mind. In the latter part of the film, visual effects begin impeding on the narrative with solid success. There’s not a frame of the film that viewers won’t be enraptured by.

McKenzie and Taylor-Joy are wonderful in their roles, each blending their performances just enough to seem like they are acting with one mind, further giving depth to idea that her reality and her dream world are entwining over time. Smith and Stamp are also solid, but the real class act here is Diana Rigg as the proprietor of a hostel Eloise eventually moves into. Rigg’s performance is among the best she’s ever given and it’s a shame that it didn’t translate into an Oscar nomination.

Last Night in Soho has some darker, horror-adjacent elements and one could make the case for it being a kind of horror project, but so too are there elements of neo-noir infused into the proceedings. The end result is a film that doesn’t feel like it’s selling out to one particular style, but is effectively evoking all of them. It’s a movie that should please both fans and non-fans of the horror genre. It’s a spectacular effort worth seeking out.

Review Written

September 28, 2022