Last Night in Soho

I like Edgar Wright, but the more serious he gets, the more I have a problem with it. So I'll always prefer Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz to the shallow and over-stylized Baby Driver. And now over Last Night in Soho. His new release reminded me of Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak, a horror film that was great in every way, audiovisually and genre-wise. Only that with this one, I felt like the director was fulfilling a dream of his, paying homage to a favorite genre, a favorite era, and a favorite form. And does it brilliantly, as if he had made the whole thing for himself rather than anyone else. On the other hand, Wright's play with color, the great soundtrack, the gorgeous costumes, and his typical audiovisual games from time to time still work great. And Thomasin McKenzie is excellent, with Anya Taylor-Joy not far from her, but it's not enough. With Last Night in Soho Wright makes mostly himself happy, which I wish him well, but I won't applaud him for it. (03/11/2021)

Edgar Wright is a talented director, and unlike other filmmakers who make their own genre and play in their own sandbox, his genre spectrum is diverse, yet miraculously the result is almost always quality filmmaking, and Last Night in Soho is no exception. What we have here is a film that is, quite objectively and in all respects, excellent. If it's supposed to be engaging and funny at the outset, it's engaging and funny; if it's supposed to pique the viewer's curiosity from the first few minutes, it piques their curiosity; and if it's supposed to be bloody gritty, atmospheric, uncomfortable and depressingly schizophrenic, believe me, it is. The first half had me glued to my seat from the opening minutes and for me, it's the best 50 minutes of cinema in a long time because I literally ate up everything and all the components, including the characters, the atmosphere, the colourful audiovisuals and the horror elements were served in absolutely precise doses. The only minor complaint I have is the ending, which to some extent degrades the whole "uplifting" imaginative idea of the film, which from the very beginning seems to be "something more than just an ordinary film", slightly by its ordinariness and to some extent predictability, but it doesn't change the fact that Last Night in Soho is a film I will remember for a long time and few things can get under my skin like that. A full-bodied, depressing, atmospheric to the point of excellence spectacle that scores points not only with the film itself, but for me with perhaps the best movie trailer of all time. Oh, and by the way, Thomasin McKenzie is a treasure. (03/11/2021)

Edgar Wright has made a kind of antithesis to the idealized utopia of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He has created a movie for all those people who have their heads in the clouds, and who like to dream about how they would have lived in a different ("better") time. However, every period in the past had its advantages and disadvantages. Last Night in Soho is a horror movie for fans of imaginative visuals and knowing winks combined with modern trends, even though it is doubtful you are going to be terrified by it. Anyway, I found it quite enjoyable and I enjoy replaying it in my head. (02/11/2021)

I'm pretty pleased with Wright's new film, though it does take a weird nosedive during the ride to the finale and struggles to not completely fall apart at the end. At the same time, the acting is brilliant, the sets are great, the direction is imaginative, the soundtrack is polished and the cast is amazing, especially Thomasin McKenzie, who I find to be one of the cutest and most likeable heroines in horror in a long time. The script throws up a number of themes and you wait to see what will come out of them... only to find that many turn out to be nothing. The ending itself makes it seem as if a number of minutes were cut before it, or as if the director and everyone on set suddenly stopped having fun. But I don't want to sound too negative, because I definitely don't have a negative feeling about this film. On the contrary, I was more satisfied than I expected for most of the runtime, and I'm just a little disappointed that the finale didn't go as far as it looked like it might at one point. (04/11/2021)

Last Night in Soho drew me to the cinema thanks to an enticing trailer and an even more enticing cast, so I went to the screening quite excited. At first, I found the film to be an average psychological thriller about delusions and demons of the past, but then the plot began to pick up and the suspense wasn't so much about the thrills as it was about unraveling the mystery set up. Even though I know that "the killer is the butler", the makers still managed to keep me guessing almost to the end, making me enjoy both plot twists all the more. Once again, I have to praise the excellent casting, as well as the 1960s art style and the visuals of the "ghosts". In the end, it's not a pure four stars, but in this case I'll add it. (13/11/2021)