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London, 2021. A fashion student with kind-of clairvoyant powers moves to the city and forms a cross-time connection thing with a young woman from the 1960s.
Starring Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Michael Ajao, Terence Stamp, Diana Rigg
Written by Edgar Wright, Krysty Wilson-Cairns
Produced by Nira Park, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Edgar Wright
Duration 116 minutes
I really wish I enjoyed Edgar Wright’s stuff more. I mean, I should do: I’m in the ideal demographic and generation; his interests overlap with my own; his movies are well-structured, competently made and high in entertainment value. And I was 16 when his breakthrough TV series Spaced was first aired and absolutely loved it.
But somehow, the word that comes to mind when I think of SHAUN OF THE DEAD, HOT FUZZ, SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD and BABY DRIVER is ‘overrated’. None of them are as good as people babble on about, with SHAUN in particular elevated onto a pedestal that puts it above criticism and seemingly giving Wright a pass for life. That film is good, don't get me wrong, but come on: as far as horror-comedies go, it falls short of AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, BRAINDEAD, EVIL DEAD II, GREMLINS, CRITTERS, TREMORS, GHOSTBUSTERS, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, BEETLEJUICE, RE-ANIMATOR or THE LOST BOYS.
I do like THE WORLD’S END. That’s the only one that feels like it was made by an adult for adults, where Wright transcends his juvenile dedication to style over substance. He’s similar to Robert Rodriguez in that way, but I’d say I’ve got more out of the cinema of Rodriguez over the years – although to be fair to Edgar, Robert’s own idea of ‘grown up’ is SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR.
LAST NIGHT IN SOHO? I’m afraid it's another entry in Wright’s oeuvre of ‘meh’.
We're introduced to Thomasin McKenzie’s Eloise dancing around her bedroom in some kind of homemade dress to Peter & Gordon's ‘World Without Love’, indulging her twin fantasies of becoming a clothing designer and living in the 1960s. She has a goal, she has a passion – but she’s also socially awkward and clumsy in the best Bridget Jones/every-romcom-ever tradition, colliding with her record player (of course she uses vinyl). She also sees her dead mother in the vanity mirror, sowing a supernatural seed into the plot. I’d call this opening sequence an effectively economical bit of scene-setting, if the whole thing didn’t feel so vaguely irritating.
"It's not what you
imagine, London. You've got to look out for yourself!" warns her gran
when Eloise receives a letter admitting her into the city’s premier fashion
college, giving me echoes of those poor girls in THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT who also made the fatal mistake of visiting a major metropolis.
Thankfully, Wright doesn’t have anything nearly as nasty/daring in mind for young Eloise. The next morning, she’s staring wide-eyed out the window of a cross-country train away from whatever backwards but safe hamlet she's from, oversized headphones blasting the reassuring sounds of ‘Don’t Throw Your Love Away’ by The Searchers.
She’s barely out of King's Cross St Pancras before she's forced to endure rapey innuendo from a pervy black cab driver on the way to her dorm. Therein lies further danger in the shape of her roommates/antagonists-in-waiting, who overuse the word ‘babes’, drill her with some exposition-inducing questions and take her to the pub for her first experience of alcohol (which of course they don't have in the countryside) and of hiding in a toilet stall overhearing people she had thought were her friends slagging her off.
Fortunately, Diana Rigg enters the picture as a kindly landlady who offers an escape from the Bitch Patrol by way of an attic room for rent. Eloise moves in quick-smart and, despite the constant flashes of red and blue from a sign outside making it look like she’s in SUSPIRIA (nice try, Edgar), she falls asleep peacefully to ‘You're My World’ by Cilla Black.
(At this point, I started to wonder if Wright had one eye on flogging vinyl-pressed soundtracks to hipsters and misty-eyed Boomers when he came up with this project – and yes, Barry Ryan’s ‘Eloise’ does get an airing.)
During her
slumber, our Eloise finds herself embodying Anya Taylor-Joy’s independent-minded
singer Sandie in the Big Smoke of the Harold Wilson years. As these
flashback-dreams roll on nightly, her EYES OF LAURA MARS psychic-connection to
such an empowered female gifts Eloise a renewed confidence during her waking
life, demonstrated by how she struts down Carnaby Street with a new hairdo towards
college where she wows her teacher with her clothing sketches. But when Sandie
realises that all the men she trusted are bastards and have put her on
a collision course with coercion, exploitation and murder, the ghosts of the
past start to impact Eloise's present and she must truly shake off her
passivity once and for all.
LAST NIGHT IN SOHO
isn’t exactly terrible, but it is a promising concept still in search of a
solid film. I keep reading that it's a 'psychological horror' – Edgar's doing his Argento impression, but where's the psychology at? Everything is cartoony and one-dimensional; perhaps the pandemic rushed
it into production before the script had gone through sufficient redrafts. McKenzie
does her best with her deer-in-the-neon-headlights role,
but between this and M Night Shyamalan’s OLD she might want to tell her agent
to only give her screenplays that are populated by recognisable human beings.
And the weird anti-London sentiment that Wright (born in Poole, Somerset) peppers throughout really grates, with pearls like "London can be a lot" and "London’s a bad place" – maybe don't spend all your time in fucking Soho, then. (I did however chuckle at Michael Ajao’s bashful, non-threatening love interest admitting that he found hopping over the Thames to the north of the city a really daunting step.)
One definitely pandemic-influenced touch and probably the highlight for me: the John Carpenter-style Panavision shots of empty central London streets during the end credits.
Hmm, now where's that old DVD of HALLOWEEN hiding ...
Two stars out of five.
Valid use of the
word ‘last’? As things
wrap up, Eloise is well on her way to fashion-designing success, so it seems
unlikely that further evenings in the West End aren’t upcoming.
What would a movie called FIRST
NIGHT IN SOHO be about? Probably dodging so many tourists that eventually you get pissed off and jump on a train to do a reverse-Ajao and have a much better time somewhere south of the river.
Previously: SAFETY LAST!
Next time: THE LAST HOUSE
Check out my books: Jonathanlastauthor.com
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