Last Night in Soho is a surreal, psychological thriller from British filmmaker Edgar Wright. Wright has been a beloved cult writer-director for over 15 years, thanks to his trio of Simon Pegg/Nick Frost comedy collaborations (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World’s End) and his underrated adaptation of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. With each film, he continues to expand his audience, culminating in 2017’s stylish, smash-hit Baby Driver. Wright’s writing and directing usually showcases a biting, deadpan humor, and Last Night in Soho is a compelling departure from that tone: a straight-faced horror that is well-suited to Wright’s confident directorial flair, even if he and co-screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns struggle to make good on Soho‘s promising set up.
Thomasin McKenzie (Jojo Rabbit, Leave No Trace) plays the soft-spoken Ellie, an aspiring fashion designer from humble origins entering a prestigious London design school. Quickly overwhelmed by cut-throat realities, Ellie retreats into vivid, recurring dreams of Sandie (The Queen’s Gambit’s Anya Taylor-Joy), a nightclub singer in swinging 60’s London. Ellie becomes entranced with Sandie’s story—until this glamorized past and her present-day life quickly begin to unravel.
Soho is at its most effective early on. McKenzie and Taylor-Joy have compelling screen presence, and we share Ellie’s confusion and fascination as she voyeuristically lives out Sandie’s vibrant nightlife. Those sequences are Soho’s high points, and Wright is flexing his technical muscles. Wright’s strength is his mastery of the edit; throughout his filmography, he uses inventive and decisive edits and cuts to find the perfect rhythm of each scene. His specialty is to beautifully pair image with music, staging thrilling set pieces built from the ground up with the soundtrack in mind. There is a similar infusion of music in Soho that inspires his editing choices, injecting even those weaker moments with life and momentum. During those perhaps-a-dream-perhaps-not sequences, Wright employs practical, old-school, camera trickery, as McKenzie and Taylor-Joy seamlessly switch places during dance sequences, continually blurring the line of reality for both Ellie and the audience.
It’s hard not to give any modern film a pass purely for producing an original story with a distinct point-of-view, but Wright has proven he should be held to a higher critical standard. He and Wilson-Cairns have laced the narrative with commentary on the dangers of over-romanticizing the past and a harsh critique of the sexist hierarchy of the fashion industry (and, by extension, most other industries)—but those thematic ideas feel underserved by the end of the movie. Soho is clearly indebted to superior psychological thrillers, and as the mystery unfolds, the film hits more conventional genre beats and loses the compelling mystique of its opening act. But with those narrative fumbles, Soho is still a slick watch, never losing its striking atmosphere and serving up exciting sequences: visually rich throughout, but ultimately lightweight.
Last Night in Soho is currently playing in theaters. It runs 116 minutes and is rated R for bloody violence, sexual content, language, brief drug material and brief graphic nudity.
