I think I caught Last Night in Soho on its last night in cinemas – that’s a story. Everybody tells me that Edgar Wright is amazing, but I suck, because apart from Baby Driver, the only other E. Wright movie that’s crossed my view is Shaun of the Dead, and that was too long ago to fully remember. But Baby Driver, ey? Woo! What a top-class action thriller. Last Night in Soho looks spooky, and possibly raunchy, and I’ll be expecting the same world-beating execution here.
Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie) is on her way to fashion college in London, and hopes to prove herself in one of the fashion capitals of the world. Upon arriving at shared living, her fellow classmates aren’t very nice to her, so she moves herself into a small private apartment. At night, vivid dreams transport her back to the sixties, where she visits the vibrant nightlife of the times, as if living a double life through the eyes of forthright and wide-eyed socialite Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy). Ellie can’t wait to see what happens next with Sandie, but her desires of becoming a singing sensation soon turn sour, where elegance and opportunity become manipulation and murder. In the present, Ellie must avenge Sandie, for her own piece of mind, before she loses it.
As the movie begins in Ellie’s countryside home, I thought to myself, ‘does this feel like decades-old horror?’ It does; it does feel like a horror movie from decades ago.’ Is it the aspect ratio, the focus, the framing? I wish I had the technical know-how and grasp of film history in this moment to explain myself, but I don’t 😔 Let’s just say I kept waiting for Rosemary’s baby to roll passed, or Gran (Rita Tushingham) to be snatched out the bedroom windows by Freddy Kruger’s claw. It seems appropriate that I got an earlier vibe though, because as Gran is detailing how Ellie has had a hard time seeing visions of her dead mother, I was like… ‘Ellie has the Shining; got it – that’ll explain her upcoming connection to Sandie later on’. If for nothing else, when the movie gets going, you simply must pay credit to the staging, the cinematography that places Ellie and Sandie interchangeably through shots, and the production design, that recreates this richly elegant view of London in the sixties – I think this is the best-looking movie I’ve experienced in 2021. The costumes and dancing are delightful. The entire soundtrack is just cool; I think I fell for immersing myself in the style of England’s yesteryear as much as Ellie does, since Gran’s certainly got a good taste in music! When the ghastly ghouls start haunting Ellie through the streets and the library, I did think they looked like bigger-budget Doctor Who enemies, but that could just be because I had Matt Smith on the brain, who’s present in Last Night in Soho as Sandie’s manager Jack. Thematically, I deeply respected the decision to have the ghoul’s faces melded though, as the sleaze that preys upon Sandie is numerous, and it mirrors the social threats Ellie is experiencing in her own move to London.
More than this, something about Ellie is precisely in-tune and spoke to me; her surrounding experiences, crushing instead of fostering her optimism to thrive – her loneliness, and her fear, out of her wits trying to keep it all together when she’s unequipped to deal with the challenges that face her; like a room full of ghosts when you’re trying to sleep, and feeling like a failure because of it. I liked the slow build-up concerning Ellie’s life, before we even get to Sandie, detailing roommate Jocasta (Synnøve Karlsen) being a bitch, and the internalisation on Ellie’s behalf. Then there’s also the big glass-shattering moment that I’m sure we’ve all experienced; when something seems so wonderful until you feel like you’re seeing it for the first time, and it’s toxic – that’s Sandie trying to get her singing opportunity and finding out it only works if the girls are willing to degrade themselves for those who hold the power, and they are honey-potted into it. The movie nails the raw emotionality of every dramatic situation, and is successful as a psychological horror because of it.
Thomasin McKenzie is dangerous, man. With those big bright eyes, she’s very good at playing innocence, and I struggle to not want to nurture her like a baby bird that’s fallen out of a nest every time I see her; I think I’m smitten. Conversely, Anya Taylor-Joy must seriously be becoming renowned for her hard-edged ballsy persona that’s present in a lot of her characters – from Emma. to The New Mutants; she’s fantastic, and has become an A-grade talent in my eyes, if she wasn’t already. I thought Diana Rigg was a gem as well, hopefully relishing the opportunity to be a sweet old lady and a lashing murderer in the same role – I mean, again, as if Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones wasn’t enough. Michael Ajao plays John, and John is nothing but a noble steed – I mean that complimentary, but I don’t know if that’s problematic (it feels potentially problematic to me; putting him in the same company as Donkey from Shrek). But that’s exactly how I see him – I spoke recently of the character Claire in The Night House being a brilliant friend, and John is too, but considering he only just met Ellie, and she’s been acting like a crazy-person throughout, he’s almost too nice – he’s a noble steed, I’m telling ya.
Then comes discovering the answer to the movie’s mystery, and it’s like… huh. I don’t suppose it explains why Ellie envisioned Sandie getting murdered in her room when she never did. Here I’ve been feeling heartbroken for Sandie, and in a way, I’m glad she got her own back, but as a murderer, I’m not sure I can feel sorry for her anymore. The movie takes away the damsel in distress, the butterfly crushed on the wheel of life, and replaces her with an old bat who’s got malicious intent to our poor Ellie, while changing the men with the melded faces from ugly oppressive cogs in an underground system, to victims themselves, asking Ellie for help; and it isn’t smooth about it at all – it’s like ruggedly flopping over a cream cake. If that’s not troubling enough, the movie then redoes ‘Return of the Jedi and has a young Sandie appear in Ellie’s mirror as a force ghost at the end, when Sandie lived her full life, and should be the older version of the character, and not Hayden Christensen… sorry, I mean, not Anya Taylor-Joy. There were three times during the movie where I saw the reveal coming a couple minutes ahead of it happening – once was Handsy (Terrence Stamp) actually being the old cop, twice was the ghouls asking Ellie for help, and thrice was the old woman being Alex, and knowing more than she was letting on, as she was the only other woman alive from the sixties that we’d met. I didn’t expect her to be Sandie though, which really stonewalls this mystery, and I don’t think it even makes sense with the evidence that we were presented. I guess the short of it is, this is one of those movies where the eventual explanation topples the tension, totally deflates the balloon and leaves it farting around the room.
So, you won’t believe it, but I don’t know what to do with this. For more than three-quarters, Last Night in Soho is a blast! From the trailer, I thought I’d be comparing it to Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris; and how fantasizing about the past negates living in the present, but that’s only a tiny portion of the movie, and Last Night in Soho is more like a movie like Suspiria in tone and contention, with a ripping excellent investment in tension, and character, and style, that would have this objectively as one of the best movies of the year. But that ending… is unsatisfactory. I was blown away by everything but the conclusion of the story, and for that, I don’t think I can rate this movie higher than a 4.0. So that’s what’ll be – 4.0; for the murder mystery that unfolds by getting a good night’s sleep.
4.0
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