LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (2021)
Updated: Dec 10, 2022
A Comedic Director Crafts a Descent Into Darkness
Grade: A-
(**Spoiler Alert!!**)
Edgar Wright is known for directing outrageous comedy-adventures that transcend or satirize their genres, like Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007) or Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010). Last Night in Soho is drastically different from his earlier work in that it embraces dark, serious themes instead of skirting them or shrugging them off. Some of its intentionally scary moments become repetitive and tiresome as the film goes along. But, much like No Time To Die (2021), it bounces back with a shocking finale; in this case, the ending is so intense that it eclipses most of the earlier lulls.
The movie follows Thomasin McKenzie as Eloise Turner, a wide-eyed young dreamer with a passion for the 1960s who lives with her grandmother in the English countryside after losing her mother when she was seven. Eloise is an aspiring fashion designer, so it is a dream come true when she is accepted to attend the London College of Fashion. But her enthusiasm turns sour when her roommate turns out to be extremely rude, and she feels like a fish out of water, a girl out of time. Hoping to escape, she rents a room from a woman in Soho named Miss Collins (Diana Rigg in her final role).
Beginning the night she moves in, she has dreams about a beautiful blonde woman in the 60s named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), and sometimes even sees herself in the woman's place. At first she loves these dreams, but when she sees all the unpleasant and chauvinistic hoops Sandie had to jump through to achieve success, they start becoming uncomfortable. Soon visions of Sandie's ordeal and eventual murder start to consume Eloise in her everyday life and, fearing for her sanity, she tries desperately to find the mysterious man who started Sandie down her dark path.
Oppression is one of the biggest themes in the movie, specifically the discomfort and insecurity that many women faced (and still face) under the lustful male gaze. It surrounds Eloise from the moment she enters London, when she finds herself the unwanted recipient of attention by a disgusting cab driver. When she moves into the 1960s-era apartment and starts having the dreams, she thinks she may have escaped to an era where she belongs. She even starts modeling her appearance and fashion ideas after Sandie. But she finds that there is no escape from this lust when she starts experiencing Sandie being stonewalled in her attempts to become a singer by her supposed love interest, Jack (Matt Smith) who soon forces her into a life of prostitution. This horror reaches its peak in a disturbing vision where Eloise/Sandie, as a prostitute, is sitting on her bed and sees men with distorted skull faces advancing on her. Thomasin McKenzie effectively portrays Eloise as a girl who has thrown herself out into the world having no idea how cruel it is. Michael Ajao is also good as John, a classmate who takes an immediate liking to Eloise and is one of the very few people who genuinely care for her. The gradual and positive development of their relationship is another strong point of the script
Despite these positives, certain overused plot devices threaten to derail the story. After the vision of the men with the distorted skulls, Eloise's journey is still frightening, but also repetitive. There are several scenes in a row where she sees these men following her, but they no longer look as scary as when first seen in the vision, especially since many of these sightings take place in broad daylight. If anything, they are somewhat intrusive to the story's progress. When Eloise starts sitting down to try and find the truth behind Sandie's murder, they just pop up again. Even when they appear in the climax, they aren't really all that scary; just like the songs in Doctor Dolittle (1967), they are more of an annoying interruption than anything else.
But when the climax rolls around, the movie is put back on track with a series of bombshell revelations. The first comes when the man Eloise thinks killed Sandie turns out to be innocent, making her partly responsible when he is killed by a car while talking to her. The guilt she feels gives way to even greater horror when she decides to move out of the apartment, only to learn the truth about Sandie and her customers. It is a major wallop of a twist that puts both Eloise and John in mortal peril. What ensues is an overwhelming phantasmagoria of memories, murder, hallucinations, blood and fire. This final sequence truly makes up for some of the script's earlier missteps.
With Last Night in Soho, Edgar Wright proves he can be deadly serious if he wants to be. The humor that permeated his best-known works has largely been abandoned here, in favor of a frightening mystery that plays on the fears that women still endure. It takes its time to get going and doesn't do everything right, but when it works, it works really well.
Director: Edgar Wright
Screenplay: Edgar Wright, Krysty Wilson-Cairns
Producers: Nira Park, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Edgar Wright
Cast: Thomasin McKenzie (Eloise Turner), Anya Taylor-Joy (Sandie), Matt Smith (Jack), Terence Stamp (Silver Haired Gentleman), Michael Ajao (John), Diana Rigg (Miss Collins), Rita Tushingham (Peggy Turner), Jessie Mei Li (Lara), Synnove Karlsen (Josasta)
Rated: R (for bloody violence, sexual content, language, brief drug material and brief graphic nudity)
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