“Last Night in Soho” - Film Review
Let me start off by talking about the thing in Last Night in Soho that I liked.
The plot follows shy, ‘60s-aesthetic-loving Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) as she leaves her small country home and heads to the big city of London to attend fashion school. After one bad night in the dorm, she decides to move into a room offered for rent by an older woman, Miss Collins (the late, great Diana Rigg). On her first night in the new room, Eloise dreams of Soho in the fabulous ’60s through the eyes of aspiring lounge singer Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy). That first dream, in which a wide-eyed Eloise watches the confident Sandie secure an audition from Jack (Matt Smith), is a true marvel. The swapping between Eloise in her pajamas and Sandie in her flowy go-go dress as they twirl with Jack is a beautiful technical and choreographic achievement. The flawless re-creation of the flashy lights and neon signs of Soho in the ’60s deserves immense praise. Presented on its own, that first dream sequence is a delight.
see!!! pure magic!!!! (universal pictures)(gif by itsanyataylorjoy)
Co-writer/director Edgar Wright is known for the infusion of music into his movies. He’s described Baby Driver as a musical, and it’s extremely likely that he went into Last Night in Soho with that same mentality. There are a staggering nineteen needle drops throughout the course of the plodding 117 minutes, which means that about every six minutes, the plot of the movie is overshadowed by a sequence centered around a song (not taking into account the score). It feels as though Wright and co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns made a Spotify playlist they loved and tried to shoehorn a plot into it — with very little success.
So much of modern movies is about being in on the joke. It’s almost as if the number of articles written about the Easter Eggs and after-the credits-scenes holds more weight than the movie itself. Last Night in Soho is a carefully constructed homage to the giallo movies of yesteryear without critiquing the people who created them or the social landscape of the time period they were released into. This movie felt like it wanted to play in the sandbox of the glitz and glamor of the ’60s, while only half-heartedly including glimpses of the reality of that time.
I do believe a good movie could be made that follows the path of a woman who wants to be a star but ends up being taken advantage of. This is not the movie to do it. Perhaps most confusing are Wright and Wilson-Cairns’ attempts at making a feminist horror/thriller. Last Night in Soho wants so desperately to look at this era with a modern lens, but takes away Eloise’s and Sandie’s agency in every possible way. Also, framing sex work as embarrassing or something to be ashamed of feels bizarrely at odds with the supposed feminism of the movie. Much of the movie’s treatment of women felt like the writers had just discovered that being a woman can mean experiencing sexism and violence, but didn’t want to take more than a quick look at the parts of society that allow this to continue. What could have been a fascinating deep dive into the trauma of two women who lived in the same apartment in Soho has been reduced to pure nothingness. It’s not often that I can’t discern what a movie is trying to accomplish, but I was left completely puzzled here.
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Are we supposed to walk away from the movie afraid of the many men who leer at Eloise and Sandie around every corner? Is not trusting leery, shadowy men really something that still needs to be taught in 2021? Or are we supposed to celebrate John (Michael Ajao), the paper-thin “good guy,” who does his best with the crumbs he was given in the script? What are we supposed to gain from Eloise’s unnamed “mental illness” that causes her to see her dead mother in mirrors from time to time? Why even include a dead mother without more back story? This unnamed “mental illness’ feels like lazy shorthand to make Eloise an untrustworthy narrator, a harmful, yet common trope in many horror movies.
Eloise and Sandie make up the bulk of the plot, but the audience knows barely anything about them. Because Wright is too focused on montages and painfully accurate re-creations of Soho, much of the character development happens offscreen. Eloise experiences one night in Sandie’s shoes, and all of a sudden she’s dying her hair blonde and exuding a sense of confidence far removed from the reserved girl we originally met. Even though she moved out of her dorm on the first night, Eloise’s roommate never questions where she’s gone. The audience is supposed to root for Eloise and John as romantic interests, but they share not one conversation of importance. Eloise can somehow afford four months of rent upfront, despite not having a job. Nothing adds up, not even the simple things.
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The central mystery in the movie is what exactly happened to Sandie during her life. The dreams Eloise has about Sandie turn darker, and she begins to be haunted by faceless ghosts, even when she’s awake. Somewhere in the middle, the movie begins to feel like it’s running in place. There’s too much to balance between Sandie’s story, Eloise’s story, and how the two intersect. The writers choose to ignore all of that in favor of pointless chase scenes between Eloise and faceless ghosts. Cheap jumpscares for the people who came to this movie thinking it was your average contemporary horror movie? I guess. Still, the ending is hastily wrapped up in drab exposition, laying out every twist and turn of the movie and leaving nothing to the imagination. Quite a few of the flashbacks felt like they only existed in case the viewer had fallen asleep in the middle of the movie (as I wanted so desperately to do).
Movies, as an art form, are fascinating because they must juggle so many different things. Script, costume, sound, editing, set design, hair, make up, acting, locations, etc. However, sometimes movies fall short because they don’t spend enough time making sure all those pieces add up to something meaningful. Ultimately, Last Night in Soho is a visually stunning letdown.
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