There are many things we know – and love – Edgar Wright for. And Last Night in Soho, his latest endeavour since 2017’s Baby Driver, is full of those trademarks. But this is also an entirely different movie from anything we’ve seen from the British filmmaker to date. Yes, it has the pop-culture pastiche and the old-timey soundtrack; however, it all comes in the guise of a horror film. Wright’s first venture into the psychological and deranged is every bit the candy-coloured fever dream you’d hope it to be.
Even though Shaun of the Dead dabbled with horror elements, it only did so very lightly and while knowingly winking at the audience too. It hardly ever tries to be scary. Or if it did try then it wasn’t very successful. Which is why Last Night in Soho is all the more intriguing a concept; this is Wright’s first attempt at cultivating an atmosphere of genuine dread and fear. And for a filmmaker as articulate and brilliant as him, this is all the more inviting an experience for audiences to see. Everyone knows that Wright can do zany comedy well and he even knows how to helm tight, stylised action. But Soho puts those skills to the test in a new way and the result is an unorthodox, phantasmagorical nightmare as funny as it is dark and as nuanced as it is surreal.
Eloise (Thomasin Mckenzie) is a wannabe fashion designer obsessed with ’60s music that thinks she was born several decades too late, moving from rural Cornwall to bustling London to attend the London College of Fashion. But the change of pace is jarring, as she still grapples with her mother’s suicide and adjusting to a city lifestyle so different from the one she left behind – non-stop partying, boys, booze, and jealous roommates. She wants nothing more than to escape. And, in fact, she does. Every night, she’s whisked off to 1960s Soho in the body of vogue popstar Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy). It’s heaven at first; Sandie’s confidence, in turn, boosts Eloise and both their lives simultaneously excel for a while. However, there’s more than meets the eye to this paradise and Eloise starts to unravel a dark, disturbing truth about the past and soon can’t shake the demons haunting her every move.
Wright eases us into the madness with an opening half that sets everything into motion; it can be quite exposition-heavy at times, giving us the low-down on Eloise but you understand why it’s all relevant later. Of course, Soho isn’t without the director’s usual zany humour and sumptuous needle drops and it all helps the audience feel comfortable in this world before we start to dive into the rabbit hole. Wright is earning our goodwill, you see, because when the turning point eventually comes, it’s a kaleidoscopic descent into madness that is surreal and psychedelic and all kinds of terrifying and it happens so fast that you need to be ready for it. It’s a ghost story that revels in the legacy of London – both celebrating the city’s glamour and decadence while slamming its seedy corruption.
It’s the underlying terror and the unspoken horror of Last Night in Soho that makes it such a lingering piece of work. The insinuations of what’s going on as the mystery continues to unfold are complex and timely and give this a very necessary, relevant backbone in today’s discourse on Hollywood power dynamics and toxic masculinity. It’s hard to relate to a time-travelling monster movie but Wright finds a way to keep this constantly accessible, despite perhaps overcooking the messages in an overindulgent finale that slightly loses the impact of it all amidst buckets of unnecessary gore and jumpscares. Soho is at its best at its most subtle. But Wright cultivates genuine unease thanks to jaw-dropping, nightmarish imagery lensed by Chung-hoon Chung and brilliantly unhinged performances from Taylor-Joy and McKenzie. This is madness at its most devilish and wildly entertaining.
Last Night In Soho
Summary
Devilish and wildly entertaining, full of jaw-dropping, nightmarish imagery. Every bit the candy-coloured fever dream you’d hope it to be.
