Last Night in Soho Review

There are certain films that are difficult to write about without ruining them. It’s easy to explain your thoughts on a final reel twist if your audience is fine with explicit spoilers. But then there are films you don’t want to spoil. Stories with endings you want to discuss but can’t. Surprise twists and turns that inform a film once you’ve seen it, but would ruin the experience if you haven’t. Take The Sixth Sense for example. The ending of that movie retroactively colors everything that came before it, but spoiling it would take so much power away from that pivotal scene that it would change how an audience views it. Please keep all that in mind while I attempt to discuss Last Night in Soho. 

Last Night in Soho is the latest film from superstar genre director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim) set to hit theaters this weekend after a long COVID delay. The movie tells the story of Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie), a young fashion student making the big move from her small town in the country to the neon-glowing city of London. An outcast from her classmates, Ellie rents a small room downtown to escape the gossip and partying of her peers. It’s in this room that she discovers a sort of psychic connection, tethering her to the life of a rising star singer who lived there in the 1960s. Every night, Ellie goes to sleep as herself but wakes up as Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) living the nightlife of 1964 London. Although these visions begin as a fantasy come true for the deeply nostalgic Ellie, things soon take a dark turn as Sandie’s story begins to consume her sanity.

What’s frustrating about Last Night in Soho, and what makes it very difficult to write about, is that the first 90 minutes of this movie are absolutely incredible, before it takes a sharp turn it never fully recovers from. By the time the film reaches its climax, Wright and co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns (1917) have brought things to such a dark and heavy place with the story of Sandie that it’s hard to transition back into the fun genre playfulness the ending wants to live in. It’s as if the writers didn’t consider the emotional baggage certain plot points would carry for an audience, and the result is a twist ending that’s misguided at best, offensive at worst. The implications of Soho’s ending are rough and result in an unfortunate aftertaste that winds up leaving a stronger impression than the fantastic 90 minutes that preceded it. 

The majority of the film plays as both a fun throwback to the music, aesthetic, and style of the 1960s and a sharp commentary on getting lost in the past through rose-colored glasses. These sequences had Wright’s signature flourishes all over them, with a killer soundtrack and impeccable production design. There were moments in this film where the in-camera practical effects wizardry was so mind-bending that it felt like I was watching a magic trick be performed by a brilliant magician. Sandie would walk by a mirror with Ellie’s reflection, or leave the frame for a second and the two would seamlessly swap places. It’s truly incredible.

Unfortunately, these moments are overshadowed by a dark cloud of misogyny that hangs over the film’s second half. As the behavior of the men in Sandie’s life becomes more predatory, it initially feels as if the movie’s message will be one about fighting back. Don’t make the mistake of expecting a post-#MeToo deconstruction of behaviors that were once deemed appropriate, though. Instead, these disturbing moments just kind of happen. Of course, it doesn’t help that this is all a lead-up to an ending that left me deeply puzzled about the actual intended message of the piece. 

Overall, Last Night in Soho is a very unusual movie. It really does start so strong and features a phenomenal performance from McKenzie that anchors the film even in its weaker moments. Even in those moments, it is a deeply cool movie, absolutely dripping with style in every frame. Does the befuddling ending spoil that? To return to my Sixth Sense analogy, imagine how you’d feel about that movie if the twist fell flat. Does that ruin how incredible the hour and a half before it was? In the case of Last Night in Soho,  I strongly recommend that you check out the movie and decide for yourself.