LAST NIGHT IN SOHO Review
Imagine time travelling to a period of time you’ve always wanted to visit. Maybe it was the Norman Rockwell 50’s, or the synthy 80’s, or maybe it was the Paleolithic era because you love dinosaurs so damn much, or, since you’re trying to stick out with your hypothetical answer, the grungy 90’s. Time travel is fun in idea, but many works of fiction have shown us that the past kind of sucks no matter if it was the 50’s (racism) or if it was the time of dinosaurs (threat of getting eaten, no internet, probably some racism) and as Edgar Wright demonstrates with his energetic style in LAST NIGHT IN SOHO, the past can sometimes turn out to be deadly (both literally and metaphorically, of course).
Taking a break from his usual playgrounds of enjoyably witty man-children and the stylish worlds they inhabit, Mr. Wright more or less fully embraces the horror genre he’s touched on throughout his career and finds a practical ghost story that despite the focus on horror, turns out to be as fun as his past comedic endeavors. From a script by Wright and co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns, LAST NIGHT IN SOHO follows the sweet and wet-behind-the-ears, Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), a young aspiring fashion designer who finds a much needed win in her tragic life when she gets accepted to a prestigious design school in London. A typical girl from the countryside, Eloise quickly learns that the bright lights are maybe a little bit brighter than she expected as she discovers that city people (and design school) kind of suck, what with the clique-y group of girls she quickly runs afoul of, the predatory men she meets on London’s streets, and of course, all those pesky, murderous ghosts. Indeed, after thinking she found the perfect steal of a cheap apartment loft in the city, Eloise (like hundreds of other young people looking for a cheap apartment) discovers that her room holds its fair of skeletons in addition to a portal to 1960’s London , a bright but slimy center of greed, lust, drugs, and of course, murder.
In the first exemplary trip to the past, which potently utilizes Wright’s eye-catching flair and style to bring that London of yesteryear to life, Eloise sees that she is inhabiting the body of a mysterious young woman: a new girl in the city looking to make a name for herself in the music scene, the blonde-haired Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy). At first tantalized by the seductive glit and glam of 1960’s SoHo, Eloise finds herself in the present yearning for her nightly “trips” back to the past as she begins to live vicariously through Sandie’s eyes, even finding inspirations from the past to help elevate herself and her fashion ideas in the present day. For the first half LAST NIGHT IN SOHO soars as a sort of unexpected fantastical adventure movie about a young girl traveling back in time as Wright and his production crew has 1960’s London pop with gorgeous set-design, lively camerawork (courtesy of Chung-hoon Chung), and the director’s penchant for toe-tapping 60’s needle drops. Like Eloise, the audience falls for the filmmaker’s trap of the a time that basked in extravagance, where opportunities, suitors, and danger were around every corner.
Of course, the film soon finds the rot underneath all the gaudy lights and slick smiles as Eloise discovers the dark path of Sandie’s life, which, as is the case in most tales of aspiring starlets trying to make it, ends in murder. From there, LAST NIGHT IN SOHO shifts into a murder mystery eventually overcome by wronged spirits (visualized as disappointingly plain faceless grey figures) and plot twists as Eloise works to get to the bottom of the decades old murder mystery she finds herself in. As you can tell, Wright’s story gets a bit goofy but it works in an endearing way as LAST NIGHT IN SOHO, a film about the dangers of nostalgia, uses the past nostalgia of old horror films we’ve seen before about wronged spirits and adds the right amount of slick modern filmmaking that makes even the most tread ground feel involving. Like those old horror films, Wright’s film is only as good as its protagonist, who must manage to effectively balance the character’s doe-eyed sincerity and eventual bouts of genuine mania brought upon by ghostly assaults and Ms. McKenzie does splendid work here in that regard. It’s hard to make main characters in horror movies feel like actual characters but McKenzie brings a genuine innocence to Eloise which makes her later shift into a harried and (literally) haunted woman that much more wrenching.
Refreshingly, the writers work with a small character roster, giving every side character (outside of the generically mean spirited “mean girls” that nag at Eloise throughout the movie) their own moment to shine courtesy of a well-rounded group of performers such as Matt Smith’s enjoyably Bri’ish slimy charmer and Michael Ajao’s cutely suitor to Eloise. While Ms. Taylor-Joy feels relatively side-lined throughout most of the film, acting as the film’s walking visual for the whole “corruption of innocence” thing, the actress brings that hard to master air of mystique to an otherwise generic character. That being said, LAST NIGHT SOHO does give Sandie a little more power to her own agency towards the film’s conclusion, which culminates in a fiery showdown that reveals a surprisingly complex tragedy, emphasizing the film’s views on how the past can be molded and shaped into whatever form it’s viewer chooses.
Even as things come together a bit too cleanly in the final moments, LAST NIGHT IN SOHO is nonetheless a lovingly composed film that brings enjoyment out of stories we’ve seen before. Like a modern musician covering a wonderfully timeless old song, the lyrics remain the same but with a slight change of instrumentation or even a change of pace, there can be entertaining new creases to be found in a dip back into the past.
4/5
