Last Night in Soho

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)

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)

With Scott Pilgrim I considered it part of the game, with Baby Driver I couldn't put my finger on it, and with Last Night in Soho it started to get downright annoying. It's that musical staginess drenched in studio lights, its artificiality accelerated by a digital camera with a high frame rate. If it's worked so far in Wright's previous films, it's because they were kind of musicals in the first place, except that Last Night in Soho has its entire plot built on trying to evoke the spirit of the Swingin' London era, and in this case you can have a wardrobe full of period dresses and tons of period props strewn about the studio, but it's still a totally obvious crying game. Logically, then, what works is one great dance sequence and the amazing Thomasin McKenzie, what doesn't work is, eh, well... the rest of the film. And Matt Smith doesn’t know how to inhale. I appreciate the very original twist that the main monster is actually the patriarchy, which I saw six times in genre films last year alone. (09/02/2022)

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)

One sort of expects form over substance from Wright, especially in a film that wets both feet in the waters of Giallo, Lynch and the 1960s. Maybe I wouldn't have expected such a big split between the exquisite form and the empty content, but whatever. The hauntingly enchanting hallucinatory atmosphere makes up for a lot of it, likewise with Wright in some places of the first half, which although it's not without its hiccups, it definitely has something (and especially someone) to build on. Unfortunately, though, Wright decided to start grafting some content in the second half and ruined everything, especially during the final 20 minutes, which are unintentionally ridiculous. What is most fascinating about the whole shattering finale is that even the otherwise top-notch form betrays him during it. (03/11/2021)