Review: Last Night in Soho

60s-loving student Thomasin McKenzie gets into a London fashion school, allowing her to move into the Soho area. Renting a room from grim-faced, no-nonsense Dame Diana Rigg, McKenzie starts to experience unusually vivid dreams set in 60s Soho. The dreams centre around an aspiring young singer named Sandie (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), and before long McKenzie is starting to take influence from her. But then the dreams start to get darker and more disturbing…

 

Director Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead”, “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”) and his co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns (“1917”) clearly have an affinity for the Swinging 60s and genre cinema. Unfortunately, that does not result in this 2021 film being any good. The problem I think is that Wright and Wilson-Cairns have created this world ripe for horror, but haven’t placed the right story into it. They’ve thrown too many genre influences into the mix, complicating something that would’ve been so much better if simplified. Wright could’ve made two separate, quite interesting films out of this material, instead he and Wilson-Cairns have uncomfortably combined it into one. It’s a mess.

 

Lead actress Thomasin McKenzie is enormously charming and for a while I cared, because I cared about the lead character. I was also digging the Swinging 60s meets giallo vibe Wright was bringing to the early section of the film (even though the film isn’t actually set in the 60s), especially with some of the lighting and camerawork flourishes. From a purely directorial and visual standpoint, I found it brash and energetic filmmaking in spite of a slow pace – at first. And hey it’s always great to see the late Dame Diana Rigg on screen. She’s terrific in her last role, a seriously underrated actress. Terrence Stamp is similarly well used here as well. In fact, even at his age he’s much more convincingly threatening than co-star Matt Smith. More on the latter in a bit.

 

Unfortunately with Anya Taylor-Joy’s entrance into the story, things start to go wonky. She’s good, it’s not her fault how she’s been used here. Wright’s use of the Taylor-Joy character adds too much clutter for my liking. While at first I was admiring the Argento/Powell/Carpenter influences very clearly on show here (Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion” too), I started to get frustrated by how needlessly messy it was starting to get at the expense of any forward momentum of plot. I think Wright needed to choose one or two influences at most and focus on those for the plot/story. By throwing all sorts of influences at the wall, the adhesiveness wears off fairly quick. That slow pace really started to bother me too. It was taking forever to go anywhere whilst spending time seemingly going everywhere all at once. If Wright had gone for a straight ahead giallo/thriller set in the 60s, we’d have something undoubtedly much better. Instead he also wants to go all Lynchian mindfuck with Taylor-Joy, and throw in some time-wasting musical/dance numbers ‘coz he saw “The Red Shoes” once in film school and thought it was super dandy. A little of it goes not very far, it gets awfully repetitive after a while. As good as the music is, after an hour I was sick to death of it. It’s music number – bitchy girl looking bitchy – Anya Taylor-Joy being Anya Taylor-Joy – rinse and repeat. As for the aforementioned Mr. Smith, playing Sandie’s creepy boyfriend/manager he’s meant to be playing somewhat of a James Dean gone-to-seed, and I’m sorry but the former “Dr. Who” is absurd in the part. With a face like a “Dick Tracy” henchman he’s just a very peculiar man to play a creepy matinee idol sort, a role that probably should’ve gone to Tom Hiddleston or Nicholas Hoult. Every moment with him seems like a put-on, but I get the feeling the casting was meant to be taken seriously.

 

Incredibly disappointing, a film that is both too thin and overstuffed at the same time. Thomasin McKenzie is terrific, the film is well-shot, and you feel like the basics of a good horror/thriller are here. Wright has simply gone in a wrong-headed direction with it, overcomplicating things to little interest of mine. It’ll probably be someone’s idea of a minor classic, but I thought it was a mess. Good late hour twist, though.

 

Rating: C