'Last Night in Soho' is Edgar Wright's first miss
Focus
“Last Night in Soho” looks and sounds great. Dizzyingly blending the ‘60s and modern day with similar musical rhythms that he brought to the exhilarating “Baby Driver,” director/co-writer Edgar Wright maintains the visual signature he developed in his Cornetto trilogy (“Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz,” “The World’s End”) and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World." Meanwhile, he downshifts into a narrative that’s more about mirrors than levels, and the claustrophobia of discomfort rather than the relief of escape.
It’s also the first time that depth eludes a filmmaker so skilled at merging entertainment with emotional weight. Despite the trademark, whirling-DJ editing, “Last Night in Soho” gets stuck in a revolving door of trauma and confusion and emerges without the heft it attempts in a story that starts as a familiar coming-of-age saga (country girl goes to the city, roommate is a bully, etc.) and eventually becomes a time-hopping, horror-laced murder mystery. Sort of.
Kudos to Wright and co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns for attempting something loose and genre-bending, with retro sweetness violently bumped against a modern awareness of predatory men and the impact on women who just want to be taken seriously as artists. But much of “Last Night in Soho” is a dead end, a seed needing time to grow. Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie) is thrilled to get her own place and incorporate visions of an aspiring ‘60s singer named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) into her work at fashion school, an axis on which the film can spin from Ellie’s visions of her late mother to the network of creepy dudes that leer at these young women in the past and present. Anyone who doesn’t recognize the truth there has a lot to learn yesterday, by which I mean years ago.
But “Last Night in Soho” forgets to expand beyond a one-note exploration of ambitious girls and aggressive guys, ending up with a surprising and misguided critique of sex work. It’s possible that wasn’t the goal; the film may just be an attempt to explore the dangerous echoes of childhood hurt and antiquated thinking and sexist mentalities based in possession and dehumanization.
That requires a fleshed-out idea of what to say, though, and no matter how good McKenzie and Taylor-Joy are (and they’re both great, always) a sense of disappointment settles in midway that only escalates when the film’s less-than-shocking twist arrives. Sometimes good movies aren’t particularly enjoyable to watch; sometimes bad movies offer certain delights even as they don’t work. Case in point.
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