by Aaron Schweitzer, Editor
As someone who genuinely considers myself to be a non-horror fan, I find it odd that I seem to be writing on so many horror films this year. What shocks me even more is that I picked two horror films that I wound up loving! The last movie review I wrote for the site was The Night House, and now we finally get Edgar Wright’s follow up to Baby Driver (my 26th favorite film of all time), which sees the filmmaker going in a new direction. Sure, he has done horror before with Shaun of the Dead, but really, I mean more of a straight horror film. There are no snazzy editing techniques like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, much less comedy than Hot Fuzz, and much less musical syncopation like Baby Driver. Instead, Last Night in Soho is a truly original film, both in its own right and as an Edgar Wright film.
First thing’s first, I’ve got to get my biases out of the way. I decided recently that Wright is my favorite active filmmaker. He didn’t make my favorite film of all time (26 is the closest he got), but the guy simply does not miss. Each of his films hits me on a completely different level, and I enjoy each of them for completely different reasons. While Last Night in Soho hits on some things Wright has done really well in the past, he comes out again with something that just feels like a totally different film, but also oddly feels like no one else could have made it.
Let’s throw this on the table: Last Night in Soho is absolutely Wright’s best looking film. The cinematography, done by Chung-hoon Chung, is absolutely gorgeous, and the film really gets the idea that every frame could be a painting you keep around your house. While I am certainly not a horror expert, there is also a lot here that really harkens to older horror films and really cements itself as both a modern setting as well as the ’60s where Anya Taylor-Joy and Matt Smith’s story takes place.
Speaking of those two, you cannot look over the acting in this film. While no one is doing anything that I think is going to be nominated for awards, everyone is really solid. Thomasin McKenzie and Taylor-Joy are the standouts for sure — they’re doing great work. A role and actor that surprised me a lot was Michael Ajao, who was the one performer I had no recognition of. Matt Smith, Terence Stamp, and Diana Rigg are all great at what their roles are, but they are all playing relatively one-note characters, so they don’t really have a lot to make special. Like I said, no one is super special, but everyone is solid and the two leads are great. But that’s nothing new for those two performers.
Going into the story, there is something really unique about this film. I love the idea of time travel murder mysteries, but I am not sure there’s ever been a good one (if I’m missing one, PLEASE hit me up on Twitter). Last Night in Soho manages to tell a classic tale in a modern setting, and I can’t help but love to see these two worlds collide. In the modern world, Ellie (McKenzie) has a nostalgia for a world she has never lived in, and unfortunately experiences the worst elements of that period. While London in the ’60s seems like a really cool place to visit, bad people got away with doing bad things a lot easier, and for as many great stories as there are, there have to be as many, if not more, awful stories. Throughout this movie, we get to see Ellie’s vision of the ’60s, starting with a glamorous view outside of a fancy theater showing Thunderball, and ending with brutal murder in a cheap apartment. Watching Ellie experience the collapse of her dream time and setting, and how she chooses to react to it both in the past and the present kept me hooked the entire way.
I only have one complaint. The setup, subsequent story, and the climax are all really interesting and really unique to me, but the ending is rather bland and uninspired. The story felt like it was gaining momentum, and it took some turns to try to subvert your assumptions, which felt like they were forced on your from the start. Anyone with a brain would know they would not be accurate by the end. In doing so, the film seems to scramble to wrap up and try to sneak in a last minute whammy with a new message introduced and it really feels like a mess. But at the end of the day, it hardly ruined my experience. It’s like when you go to Waffle House and they got your order wrong, but all that was different was you get tots instead of hash browns. You just kind of accept it and enjoy your breakfast anyways (likely at about 10 a.m. or 3 a.m., the only valid times to be at Waffle House).
It will be interesting to see if this film is remembered at awards season. I think it for sure deserves a cinematography nomination, and you can expect a costume/make-up and art/set design. That should probably be it, but I would not be surprised to see more. As it stands, it’s currently my third favorite film of 2021. If you are looking for a film that has a similar aesthetic to Reminiscence, similar character development to The Night House, and a dash of Promising Young Woman all wrapped in a unique story, then you should wind up really loving Last Night in Soho.
Grade: A-
You can follow Aaron Schweitzer on Twitter and Letterboxd