TIFF 2021: Last Night In Soho
Universal PicturesEdgar Wright’s hotly-anticipated Last Night In Soho is a stylistic homage to the 1960s and genre horror, yet falls flat with its injection of questionable social commentary. While he is known for taking established genres and adding a new spin, Wright fails to do that in Last Night In Soho. It simply does not feel like an Edgar Wright film and nowhere near the same level as his previous work. Instead, Wright loses himself in the film’s overdone visuals and cheap scares, forgetting to craft a well-thought-out story.
Last Night In Soho tells the story of Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie), a shy and introverted girl from Cornwall who moves to the big city to attend the London College of Fashion. With her hyper fixation on the 1960s and her homemade clothes, Ellie does not fit in with her peers and promptly moves out of student residences to live on her own. She becomes a tenant of Miss Collins (Diana Rigg in her final performance) and quickly finds that her room is haunted. At night Ellie’s dreams transport her back to the sixties and into the life of Sandy (Anya Taylor-Joy). Sandy is an aspiring performer and soon becomes involved with Jack (Matt Smith), who becomes her manager. As Ellie continues to visit Sandy in her dreams, she soon uncovers that her life isn’t as glamorous as it seems.
Thomasin McKenzie is the film’s standout. The rest of the cast of characters are rather underdeveloped and do not receive anything gripping to work with. This would make sense for Sandy and Jack, as they’re purely seen in Ellie’s dreams, but even the real-life characters around Ellie are forgettable. Anya Taylor-Joy purely works as an extension to McKenzie’s performance, which is a shame, as her talents are wildly underused. Fortunately, Diana Rigg is given at least one shining moment in the film. McKenzie shows great range in Last Night In Soho and does her best to take Ellie from being a reserved young girl to a total scream queen. But for some reason, Wright prevents Ellie from having a proper internal journey. Everything that happens to her is external. Ellie is never given the chance to process what is happening to her and Sandy, she’s just ripped to the next scene.
The editing is especially of note, as it never comes close to the heights Wright has shown in his previous work. The production design and costuming are quite maximalist but the big monster in Last Night In Soho is a horde of ghostly faceless men, and while scary and claustrophobic at first, the bad CGI and overuse ruins the horror. The only technical element of Last Night In Soho that is good is the cinematography, especially in the scenes when Thomasin McKenzie and Anya Taylor-Joy are together, as the film uses cool mirror tricks and transitions to translate that Ellie is shadowing and even becoming Sandy as she finds herself closer and closer to the truth.
Last Night In Soho is meant to be a critique of the glamorisation of the past, and while the film seems to start out with having an interesting take on the topic, it goes totally off the rails as Wright abandons the messaging he spent over half of the film building. He throws his story away and replaces it purely with overused horror, losing himself to messy choices and poor taste. It all feels so disappointingly lacklustre. When the easily anticipated twist in Last Night In Soho finally arrives, it is given no room to breathe and instead ruined by an abundance of exposition, which keeps the reveal from being truly compelling. Along with the gross messaging, it just feels wacky and stupid instead of horrific.
More often than not, a man should not be writing feminist material – Last Night In Soho is one of those particular cases. He uses violence towards women as a shock factor and offers no strong commentary to justify it. Ellie’s empathy is forgotten and so is the bond that Ellie and Sandy share. Instead of the reveal feeling empowering as intended, the film is a slap in the face to sexual assault survivors. Edgar Wright could have used the dual timelines of Last Night In Soho to communicate a harrowing and effective commentary on the abuse of women in the entertainment industry, but instead stops short to throw all the horror possible at the audience.
Edgar Wright tries to do so much with Last Night In Soho that it is, unfortunately, a messy snoozefest with a frankly disgusting message. Wright is going for a feminist text, horror homage, and glamorisation of the past all at once, but he is doing too much to make Last Night In Soho a truly unique film, and instead makes it the worst entry to his filmography. He relies too much on homage that he forgets to make Last Night In Soho his own.