Whatever it was that inspired the filmmakers behind Last Night in Soho to make this movie, that idea got away from them. Directed by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver) from a screenplay by Krysty Wilson-Cairns (1917), this is a film of clashing ideas and clanging style.
Thomasin McKenzie stars as Eloise, an aspiring fashion designer from a small English village who is accepted to a prestigious design school in London. Leaving her loving grandmother behind (we learn that her mother died by suicide some years earlier), Eloise heads to the big city, where she rents an upstairs room in a gloomy flat in Soho. There, while sleeping, she finds herself transported to the Soho of the 1960s, where she helplessly watches a wannabe singer, Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), fall prey to the seedier realities of that oft-romanticized time and place.
It’s a weird premise that combines the psychological thriller, time-travel, and—eventually—giallo horror genres (think 1977’s Suspiria). Unlike Shaun of the Dead or The World’s End, however, this time Wright’s juggling of genre isn’t as controlled. There is some early filmmaking fun as Eloise and Sandie seem to merge identities, from a shot of Sandie stalking down the stairs of a nightclub with Eloise watching her movements in the mirrored wall behind her to a dance sequence in which one woman is swapped out for the other between twirls. But as things get wilder, the film loses track of the why. It becomes an increasingly garish exercise in camerawork, color, and blood, without a coherent center.
Are Eloise’s visions dreams? Is she suffering a mental breakdown, of the sort that tormented her mother? Is she being haunted by Sandie? Ambiguity isn’t a strength here because some of these possibilities have troubling implications (the film is a bit flippant about suicide). We do get an answer with a reveal in the climax, but even that muddies the water, undercutting—quite literally—any notions the film had been exploring about the exploitation of women at the hands of violent men.
McKenzie, making a grownup leap after her terrific teen turns in the likes of Leave No Trace and Jojo Rabbit, gives each scene her all, but Eloise, for all her family trauma, largely registers as a vehicle for the outlandish plot. Anya Taylor-Joy, as often happens to her (2020’s Emma. being a notable exception), isn’t asked to do much more than pose. By Last Night in Soho’s end, they’ve both succumbed to the jarring collision of a swinging-sixties sensibility and slasher screams, one that’s less illuminating than it is exhausting.
(11/3/2021)
