Last Night in Soho

Edgar Wright has made more evenly balanced films than Last Night in Soho, in which Thomasin McKenzie awakens from a nostalgic daydream of 1960s London to a nightmare of disillusion. At any rate, his musical stab at post-#MeToo horror is highly entertaining and original. In fact, it is more original than you would expect from a genre movie that is so enchanted by other genres and undergoes a transformation according to which genre Wright is referencing at the given moment. That transformation is always complete. The stylisation changes along with the heroine’s motivation, goal and place in the narrative. A comedic fish-out-of-water drama in a university setting first becomes an observational movie of someone’s glittering life in swinging London and then an amateur (giallo) detective flick that continually slips into a ghost/zombie/splatter horror movie or a claustrophobic psycho-thriller along the lines of Polanski’s Repulsion. Wright and Krysty Wilson-Cairns managed to incorporate into the story a warning against idealising the past (or rather the attempt to interpret it according to today’s values) somewhat more elegantly than the motif of trauma imprinted on bodies and places. However, I definitely do not think that, with respect to its bold stylisation, the film stigmatises mental illness and sex work, as some foreign reviews accuse it of doing. It is a stylish genre mishmash. It may not work perfectly, but I enjoyed it from the opening to the closing credits. 80%. (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)

Edgar Wright has moved on from geeky parodies and comic books to a paranoid thriller, notching up the first real "serious" notch in his feature film output (Baby Driver is also slightly serious, but...). Last Night in Soho, with its extremely impressive retro-atmosphere, is such an appealing blend of Mulholland Drive and Black Swan. Wright's mannerist directorial style elsewhere doesn't distract this time (and in fact often hangs back in the background), on the other hand the visual imagination is truly stunning and the two protagonists give the performance of a lifetime. And the contrast of the "bovine, innocent, and unblemished country girl" with the spectacular "evil" London as one of the main motifs kept me entertained. The only complaint I might have is the denouement itself, which doesn't feel 100% believable, but doesn't spoil the overall impression too much. An honest and visually damn good genre film. [80%] (19/11/2021)

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)

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)