Last Night in Soho

 Year of Release:  2021

Director:  Edgar Wright

Screenplay:  Edgar Wright and Krysty Wilson-Cairns, from a story by Edgar Wright

Starring:  Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Michael Ajao, Terence Stamp, Diana Rigg

Running Time:  117 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Teenager Eloise Turner (McKenzie) moves from rural Cornwall to the bright lights of London to study fashion design.  Fascinated by the music and the style of the Swinging Sixties, Eloise moves to a bedsit in the Soho area of the city, and finds herself haunted by visions of Sandie (Taylor-Joy) an aspiring singer in the 1960s.  At first Eloise is delighted by these journeys back in time, and uses her experiences to fuel her creativity.  However, as Sandie's story becomes increasingly dark, Eloise's dreams quickly turn into horrific nightmares, which begin to bleed into her waking life.

Probably many people have visions of some fantasy "Golden Age" when everything was cool, wonderful and glamorous, even if it was a time long before they were born.  For modern day teenager Eloise it's the 1960s, but she soon comes to discover that despite the glamour, cool clothes and fantastic music, there is darkness and cruelty.  She comes to London to pursue her dreams of fashion design but almost as soon as she steps off the train, she has a disturbing experience with a creepy taxi driver, and is bullied by the fellow students in her halls of residence, causing her to move into a bedsit.  One of the hallmarks of Edgar Wright films is the visual inventiveness, and this is on full display here, particularly the sequence where Eloise has her first dream which is throughly intoxicating, as Sandie is revealed as her mirror images, and we see Anya Taylor-Joy, with Thomasin McKenzie as her reflection, and vice versa.  Thomasin McKenzie is heartbreaking as the romantic, tormented Eloise, haunted by the past in more ways than one, Anya Taylor-Joy is striking as Sandie, at first seeming the personification of sixties glamour, but who increasingly falls apart.  Former Doctor Who Matt Smith plays handsome, charismatic but dangerous Jack, and Smith is very effective in a throughly villainous role.  Michael Ajao plays Eloise's classmate John, pretty much the only sympathetic male character in the film, and he does invest what could be a very bland part with some real emotion.  There are slo appearances by several Sixties icons: Terence Stamp, Rita Tushingham and, in her final performance, Diana Rigg.  As with all of Edgar Wright's films, music is crucial here, with the stream of sixties classics almost another character.  The film does fall apart somewhat in the final third when it moves into more gruesome giallo horror territory, and at the end there are a few too many coincidences and shocking reveals, but for the most part it works very well, and the film is constantly intriguing, entertaining and sometimes genuinely shocking.  It's about the perils of nostalgia and "Golden Age" thinking, the dark side of glamour and most of all how men prey on women, which is the real horror in the film.

Anya Taylor-Joy and Thomasin Mackenzie in Last Night in Soho