Last Night in Soho Review

 

I was really looking forward to Last Night in Soho. Known for his comedies, director Edgar Wright opted to make a dark, horror-adjacent film instead. Of the main cast is Anya Taylor-Joy, an actress I’ve loved since her performance in The Queen’s Gambit. Last Night in Soho had so much going for it, and for the most part, it succeeded! I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of the film, but it slowly turns into an unsatisfying and fairly muddled conclusion with an obtuse message about nostalgia. Or about men. Or about mental illness. Or about confidence. It could have been about any one of those things, and that’s where I think the movie fails to be anything amazing. It couldn’t decide what it was trying to get across. 

I can’t give away too much of the plot, as the movie is best experienced without knowing a lot going in. I will give a primer though: Thomasin McKenzie is an aspiring fashion designer who gets the chance to attend a fashion school in London. As she’s in London, she occasionally slips into the 1960’s and observes an aspiring singer, played by Anya Taylor-Joy. And that’s all I should say. However, these two kill it. Their acting is fantastic throughout, each actress selling their character’s ambitions extremely well.

To start, I adored the set design, the costumes, just the world of London in the 1960's. Everything is neon and bright, people are dressed in suits and dresses, there are old movie posters. You feel wonder and a yearning to return to that time, and you can tell that Edgar Wright just wanted to spend time researching the olden days. These blasts from the past are juxtaposed with the modern day scenes of Tomasin’s life in Soho as she tries to adjust to moving from the rural town of Cornwall to the bustling city of London. It’s visually interesting to go from dancing halls and clubs of the past, to dark, seedy pubs of the present. Wright also does something incredibly clever with the use of mirrors, and a specific dance scene shines with creativity. 

Eventually the film’s horror elements rear their head, and it begins in great ways. While there are a lot of cheap jumpscares, (we really got to stop ratcheting up the sound of a scene for no reason other than to startle, it’s a little lazy), there are some genuinely unsettling scenes throughout the first and second acts. It’s in the third act that these elements begin to feel overdone and uncreative, as we see the elements repeat themselves over and over again. They do this for good reason, pertaining to the story and what Thomasin’s character is going through, but the shtick got a little old a little quick. 

It was by the end of the film that I couldn’t tell if I was enjoying it very much anymore. It’s tough to say without spoiling anything, so I’ll just say that things happen in a fairly unsatisfying way, and that the elements of the story struggle to connect to any internal struggles that Thomasin’s character has, or her lack of any struggles. She doesn’t really change by the end of the film, even though she goes through a fairly tough journey throughout. It made me wonder what the point of the film was, or what the message was, other than to gawk at the past, but also to be cautious of nostalgia. Another aspect of the film is how shitty men can be, but again, I don’t think Wright pushed that aspect past the basic “Men=Bad”, opting for the surface level, rather than delving into something more meaningful to add to that conversation. 

In the end, Last Night in Soho is a pretty okay movie. The first half of the film shines through and carries the lesser aspects of the film well enough, but the message comes out muddled and unclear. I liked the film, I loved the style, and I loved the music, but the story just didn’t feel all that worth telling, leaving me with a feeling of mediocrity, especially after the fantastically creative films that Wright is known for. 

Randy McLeod

Twitter: @TheeRandango