Review of Last Night in Soho (2021) by Moviemitch96 — 29 Oct 2021

An aspiring young fashion designer student (Thomasin McKenzie) travels to London to pursue her dreams of breaking big into the fashion industry. However, when she rents an old room in Soho, she soon finds herself seemingly transported back to the 60s and seeing visions of a young model and singer/dancer (Anya Taylor-Joy).

What starts off as glitzy and glamorous flashbacks of this starlet quickly turn into nightmares as images of her being seemingly murdered begin to haunt her, and she must uncover the truth about what happened all those years ago before she loses her sanity.

First off, Edgar Wright as the director of this film was what really piqued my interest. He's one of the most brilliant, creative, and all-around fun visionaries working within film today, what with films like 'Shawn of the Dead', 'Scott Pilgrim vs.

the World', and 'Baby Driver' to name a few to his name. And after having almost no idea what to expect going into this after watching the couple of very vague trailers that we got for this, I gotta say that this film was quite a lot to unpack.

It's heavy on the lights, glamor, and 60s aesthetic, while also being unexpectedly trippy as hell. Flashbacks scenes become distorted with reality quite a bit, almost a bit too much for my liking to the point where it was overly noticeable and somewhat irritating and distracting at times.

The color palette and schemes throughout however were very clever and added a nice touch to many of the scenes. All involved in the cast are brilliant, especially McKenzie and Taylor-Joy, who each stun and deliver at every turn, and Matt Smith also plays his mysterious part well.

Storywise, no film has done a better job keeping me guessing or on my toes in a long time than this one does, and this is largely thanks in part to the many flashback scenes and hallucinations that distort and blend with reality, but like I said, it also was slightly overused to the point of becoming distracting and slightly redundant.

But overall, it's undoubtedly a unique blend of horror and neo-noir, albeit a somewhat crazily-edited and tad too trippy of one as well. Still, it's got its fair share of memorable, tense, and hair-raising moments.