Last Night in Soho (2021)

 

Director: Edgar Wright

Screenplay: Edgar Wright and Krysty Wilson-Cairns

Cast: Thomasin McKenzie as Eloise "Ellie" Turner; Anya Taylor-Joy as Sandie; Diana Rigg as Alexandra Collins; Matt Smith as Jack; Terence Stamp as Lindsay; Rita Tushingham as Margaret "Peggy" Turner; Michael Ajao as John

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #262

 

[Full Spoilers]

I come to this film after an absence away from Edgar Wright as a director over a decade. I was the right age, as a teenager, when Shaun of the Dead (2004) turned out to be a surprise success. Wright was already a cult figure on television, directing Spaced (1999–2001), and made a film called A Fistful of Fingers (1995), but Shaun... cemented him as a director immediately, leading to an actual trilogy of films, not connected to each baring that they were named around flavours of Cornetto ice cream, had the same cast members (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost notably), and were twists on existing genre tropes without being ironic, be is zombies (Shaun of the Dead), cop movies (Hot Fuzz (2007)), and sci-fi (The World's End (2013)). The World's End was when I last film of his I saw, not exactly a decade but with eight years still a very long time for me from seeing one film to another. Last Night in Soho, whilst a very different film, has its genesis in the one film made between the Cornetto trilogy, the comic book adaptation of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010), the moment Edgar Wright had to move from his trilogy's trademarks to being a director who could move into any genre or tone, whether it the United Kingdom here or the United States. Last Night in Soho is definitely a different film from before.

That said, even those early films, whilst comedies, had turns where they got serious, which is a notably thing to appreciate about Edgar Wright. Whilst this is his most serious film, he was never a subtle filmmaker in tone, but he was never a director for me out-of-place of his characters, even if goofballs before, becoming serious and having complexity, which I would argue was one of the hugest virtues of Shaun of the Dead.  I came to Last Night in Soho with little knowledge of it, no context of what it was about, only that it was approaching in the theatrical release dates and being interesting in Wright tackling horror again. I had even pondered it being a giallo; it is not but, not surprisingly in lieu to being a film about the sixties, that genre get nodded to in a really violent sequence that turns the film to its finale. Instead, it is a story about a new fashion student Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie), who moves to London and, due to her unnatural abilities, finds herself wished into the sixties every time she sleeps in a rented room. Each dream has her following a woman named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), an aspiring singer, and from here it is worth bringing up how I have heard Last Night in Soho being compared to Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965). It really is not, as Repulsion, shot in the sixties in London, is less of the era but a work of different themes that happened to be made at the time, of a complete stranger to the country let alone London, played by Catherine Deneuve, which is a psychological horror about themes like sexuality and a slow burn. Likely influenced by Repulsion, Last Night... however is a 2020s film looking back on the sixties, looking upon this idealised period of London as a cultural heritage, wishing to unpack it alongside being overtly supernatural, explicitly so as whilst she is plagued by images others cannot see, Ellie's ghosts are revealed not to be merely her own psyche, even if a subplot exists of her mother having had mental illness and committing suicide. The special effects and bombast to the ghosts when they appear make it difficult to be subjective as a narrative plot thread even if Edgar Wright may have wanted them to be so.

A huge factor is that this is dealing with the past post "MeToo", a breaking point from the later 2010s where women spoke of the abuse, especially sexual, that befell them from powerful men, a movement of huge ripples in various entertainment and cultural industries, and also looking back retrospectively at the past at unpunished crimes. Last Night in Soho is ultimately about a woman in the sixties who was abused and used, including forced sex work, when she wanted to become a singer, is the kind of tale sadly that could have happened a lot in real life, and may not have been even covered up but existing candidly in the open, never addressed until discussion on how we reflect the past, especially the MeToo movement and its offshoots, forced these subjects out in the open. Last Night in Soho, again, is not a subtle film at all, so this could have been a precarious subject to tackle in terms of taste, with the possibility of offending by accident due to the tone being hyper dynamic when the ghosts do start to terrorise Ellie.

Wright's tone with this, when these revelations are revealed in full detail, will be a factor when one thinks of this film onwards. He does not flinch in damning this and sympathising with the women involved. It can easily be criticised for how unsubtle it is, but that was something about Wright, subtlety or lack thereof, I never have had issue with him casually slipping in very dark subject matter when unexpected, such as alcoholism and mortality. His previous films did drag themselves, after appreciating the aesthetics or tone of the genres they were pastiching in the first acts, into considering greater dramatic weight, so this was never an issue even if he comes to cinema from the same attitude as Quentin Tarantino, whom he has crossed paths with. Truthfully, that side of his work is what is being used to dissect the subject, the sixties here, and London as a location, with a weight in English history especially in the sixties on screen as subject. The music to the pop cultural references are as much realising the world we briefly see, including a giant marquee to the Bond film Thunderball (1965), appreciating the environment before the film condemns the era for its toxic aspects. Like Ellie's appreciation of the sixties, the film itself comes in from still loving the decade but with a reality check, even if in this fictionalised version here, of what uncomfortably human things was also likely happening when the music and culture came to be.

Casting shows this too in how Wright reveres this era but coming from it with material which thinks beyond the obvious. Terence Stamp and Diana Rigg's names in the cast in the opening credits, with no prior context of the film, expressed for me this was going to be an interesting film. Stamp, playing the mysterious older man Ellie is suspicious of the longer she has her dreams, is really interesting casting in mind that, unlike a Michael Cane or Sean Connery figure, Stamp had a really unconventional history in sixties cinema even though he may be synonymous of the decade alongside the original Superman films. Rigg, in one of her last ever roles, was an iconic figure from the sixties, from The Avengers television series, and alongside seeing two figures of this era, significantly older, as touchstones to the past, in mind to its plot being a recounting of past ghosts and skeletons under the floorboards, it really means more when figures, especially Rigg, are stripped from the iconic images of them by age and the type of characters they are playing alongside providing great performances. Wright to his credit has always been good for casting actors, especially ones who are really interesting and inspired choices, all the way back to Bill Nighy in Shaun of the Dead,  and touches like this is why Last Night in Soho works.

The film is not perfect. It does dangerously veer into a cliché I do not like at all, because it is done too much, of a main character that may be hallucinating and/or with no one else distrusting her, but it is to Wright's credit he plays with this. Even the one "bad" scene when it initially starts, when Ellie goes to the police with the obvious lack of success talking of having visions would have, does grow into more with plot strands as a result, which is not a surprise when your director is someone with a huge knowledge of cinema and said clichés. It's intense, dramatic tone may not be what you would expect from this type of film in subject, but it is nice to see how Edgar Wright, someone who may have honestly been a gatekeeper into me getting me into cinema as I did, has his own style but never, even as a more mainstream filmmaker, become conventional returning to him here. There is worth just in itself, when he makes this film as a production to entertain and be seen as a multiplex film, he with co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns still create a bombastic film in tone, but with a very serious underbelly to it and a very idiosyncratic subject, as this is a region of history, just by the famous era of London in the sixties, of Cilla Black rather than The Beatles. This is not the "cool" swinging sixties, but a sixties period with its own heritage and richness without hiding a severity to its drama. That is one of many virtues on display to appreciate.