movie review last night in soho

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Last Night in Soho

Aspiring fashion designer Eloise is mysteriously able to return to 1960s London, where she encounters dazzling wannabe singer Sandie. But the glamour is not as it seems, and the dreams of th... Read all Aspiring fashion designer Eloise is mysteriously able to return to 1960s London, where she encounters dazzling wannabe singer Sandie. But the glamour is not as it seems, and the dreams of the past crack and splinter into something darker. Aspiring fashion designer Eloise is mysteriously able to return to 1960s London, where she encounters dazzling wannabe singer Sandie. But the glamour is not as it seems, and the dreams of the past crack and splinter into something darker.

Edgar Wright
Krysty Wilson-Cairns
Thomasin McKenzie
Anya Taylor-Joy
1.1K User reviews
476 Critic reviews
65 Metascore
24 wins & 77 nominations total

Top cast 90

Ms. Collins
Eloise's Mother
(as Amieé Cassettari)

Taxi Driver #1

(as Synnøve Karlsen)

Toucan Bartender

Drunk Student

Student at Party

Silver-Haired Gentleman

College Administrator
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Trivia Final performance of Diana Rigg , who passed away on September 10, 2020. The film is dedicated to her memory. Her only child, actress Rachael Stirling , receives a "Special Thanks" in the end credits.
Goofs Eloise asks the librarian for information on missing persons for the entire 1960's, but she had an obvious reference to narrow her search - Thunderball (1965) was released in the UK on December 29, 1965 meaning this was early 1966 at the earliest.

Eloise : Has a woman ever died in my room?

Ms Collins : This is London. Someone has died in every room in every building and on every street corner in the city.

Crazy credits Before the film begins, it opens with a simple dedication: "For Diana". This is likely a dedication for the film's star, Diana Rigg, who died after shooting finished, but before the release of the film.
Connections Edited into Last Night in Soho: Deleted Scenes (2022)
Soundtracks A World Without Love Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney Performed by Peter and Gordon Courtesy of Warner Music UK Ltd

User reviews 1.1K

A litany of cliches.

Nov 5, 2021
How long is Last Night in Soho? Powered by Alexa
October 29, 2021 (United States)
United Kingdom
Film Sözlük
Korku Filmleri
El misterio de Soho
Soho, Westminster, Greater London, England, UK
Focus Features International (FFI)
Perfect World Pictures
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$43,000,000 (estimated)
$10,127,625
Oct 31, 2021
$22,957,625
Runtime 1 hour 56 minutes
Dolby Atmos

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‘Last Night in Soho’ Review: Dream Girls

Two young women from different eras form a psychic bond in Edgar Wright’s sumptuous and surprising horror movie.

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‘Last Night in Soho’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The director edgar wright narrates a sequence from his film featuring anya taylor-joy and thomasin mckenzie..

Hi, this is Edgar Wright. I am the director and co-writer of Last Night in Soho. So in this scene, Eloise, played by Thomasin McKenzie, has just rented a room in Fitzrovia, just north of Soho, and she is, shall we say, supernaturally switched on. And she is about to enter into the ‘60s in her dream. She’s a young fashion student who’s come to London and is obsessed about the ‘60s, and is about to go to the ‘60s in a very big way. Now, Cilla Black is playing here and one of the most complicated things on this entire shoot was getting these neon lights to be in time with the music, sometimes at different film speeds. And next door you see a French bistro which has the colors of the French flag, and they’re flashing blue, white, red, and then it switches to red, red, red, as she starts to go back into the past. And that was brain meltingly complicated and I will never do an effect like it ever again, but I’m glad it looks so slick. [MUSIC - CILLA BLACK, ‘YOU’RE MY WORLD’] “(SINGING) They shine within your eyes. As the trees reach.” Now this shot here, where she pulls the bed sheet back, is actually a physical shot and then the digital wizards at Double Negative created the kind of void around it. And now she wakes up in this black void and is walking down an alley set towards the bright lights of the West End. If you see the movie in the cinema or with a good sound setup, you’ll notice that the soundtrack changes from front facing stereo to all the surrounds kicking in at this point. We wanted it to be the audio equivalent of the Kansas to Oz transition in Wizard of Oz. And this shot here is actually shot on Haymarket, one of the busiest streets in London, with period cars, and period extras, and some digital work in the distance that you can see a 1965 Piccadilly Circus in the background. But we had to give the city of Westminster five months notice to achieve that shot. “(SINGING) It’s the end of my world.” And we’re now onto a set here. This was designed by Marcus Rowland. And there’s some very clever magic circle stuff going on here. So Thomasin McKenzie walks down, and there’s a mirror and there’s Oliver Phelps playing the maitre d’. And as he walks across the mirror slides back to reveal a double set, and James Phelps, his identical twin, and Anya Taylor-Joy standing in the other set. Now this is all mirror choreography done by our amazing choreographer Jennifer White and there is no glass. When they tap their fingers right here, they’re tapping each other’s fingers. And then the wizards at Double Negative do clever stuff around, like, putting a bevel on the glass and also putting like a fingerprint on the glass where they tapped fingers. And so this was one of the many complicated bits in a very complicated scene. I hope you enjoyed.

By Jeannette Catsoulis

Early in Edgar Wright’s “Last Night in Soho,” there’s a rapturous sequence showing Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) , a fashion student recently arrived in London, experiencing what seems to be a vivid dream. Entranced by a gorgeous young singer named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy, a vision in pink chiffon and blonde bouffant), Eloise finds her on a busy street where Sean Connery in “Thunderball” blazes from a gigantic marquee. As the two women enter a glamorous nightclub and Cilla Black’s aching 1964 hit, “You’re My World,” throbs on the soundtrack, they become mirror images and their stories irrevocably fuse.

Nothing in Wright’s previous work quite prepared me for “Last Night in Soho,” its easy seductiveness and spikes of sophistication. Dissolving the border between present and past, fact and fantasy, the director (aided by the euphoric talents of the cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung) has produced some of the most dazzling imagery of his career. This is also his first film with a female lead — he’s best known for buddy comedies like “Shaun of the Dead” (2004) and “Hot Fuzz” (2007) — a choice that lends an authentic shiver to a story anchored in male sexual violence and swinging London’s seedy underbelly.

As Eloise’s psychic connection to Sandie starts to overwhelm her daily life — given welcome flashes of normalcy by Michael Ajao as a supportive suitor — the plot (of which it’s best to say as little as possible) drastically darkens. The movie, though, remains luminous: Streets gleam and shadows pulse, the amber light from doorways spilling like whiskey over Eloise’s nighttime adventures. What we’re watching is a gorgeous horror movie, its surface sleekness roughened by three legendary British actors: Diana Rigg, in one of her final roles, as Eloise’s landlady; Rita Tushingham, as her grandmother; and Terence Stamp. Our first clear look at Stamp, pausing in the door frame of a dubious establishment to carefully adjust his overcoat, is a master class in minimalist menace. His mysterious character might be woefully underwritten, but I would take minutes with Stamp over hours with Chalamet any day of the week.

Though unable to sustain the patient assuredness of its first act, “Last Night in Soho” delivers almost as many pleasures as apparitions. The editing is dizzying, the music divine as Wright reaches across time to show what the big city can do to a young woman’s dreams. This gives the movie an undercurrent of wistfulness that feels exactly right, as when Eloise tells Stamp’s character that her mother is dead. “Most of them are,” he replies, before walking away.

Last Night in Soho Rated R for sleazy men, spurting blood and ghosts galore. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters.

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Last Night in Soho is Edgar Wright at his Edgar Wright-iest

It’s a passionate movie, full of throwback song cues and over-the-top style, but it works against itself in many ways

by Jack King

Anya Taylor-Joy poses in deep red light in Last Night in Soho

Edgar Wright is an artist perennially wedded to vibes, but that’s seldom meant a loss of substance. And in Last Night in Soho , a Wright film partially set in the Swinging Sixties, the vibes are myriad. There’s the karaoke score, with contemporaneous bangers from Sandie Shaw, Dusty Springfield, The Kinks, and John Barry. There’s costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux’s stunning haute couture, her white PVC macs and bubblegum-pink ballgowns evoking the best of Sixties style, pulled from the heroines of Mario Bava and Michelangelo Antonioni. And Wright himself brings his encyclopedic film knowledge to the table, as has become his directorial signature, with a smorgasbord of ’60s cinematic reference points.

The most grizzled Wright apologists among us know he’s been doing this kind of thing since the TV series Spaced , one of the greatest satires of the ’90s. But 2004’s Shaun of the Dead gave his stylistic sensibilities an international platform. It isn’t just a heartfelt, gloriously crafted rom-com in the Richard Curtis vein of Notting Hill and Four Weddings . It’s a cinematic introduction to Wright’s bombastic style on the silver screen. Think: his frantic, hotly paced editing, cutting together half-second whip-pans and smash zooms; fast-paced montages, often rhythmically synced to a karaoke score; overtly stylized genre evocation. This over-the-top tone bleeds into Wright’s sense of humor, for instance when Ed (Nick Frost) shouts Night of the Living Dead ’s famous line “We’re coming to get you, Barbara!” in an attempt to reassure his best friend’s mother.

Few contemporary directors are so metonymic in their cultivated styles. As with Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, or, gulp, Michael Bay, when you hear “Edgar Wright,” you tend to know what you’re in for. Last Night in Soho hardly diverges from the expected Wrightian norm. It’s a feast for the cineaste senses, chock full of reference points from giallo maven Dario Argento to the syrup-blood-soaked Hammer Horror flicks of the 1960s. Nearly every shot is awash with neon blues and deep reds . Soho is a colorful fantasy that knowingly cuts from the nostalgic cloth of classic horror.

Thomasin McKenzie, curled around herself on the train to London, in Last Night in Soho

Here, Wright is as visually indebted to Argento’s Suspiria as he is to Roman Polanski’s Repulsion , though the latter may go some way in explaining some of the film’s deeper flaws around the presentation of gendered violence. The film’s gender makeup is novel for Wright, who’s never previously centered a film on female characters. But this story converges on two of them: Precocious, shy fashion-school student Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie) in the present, and bold would-be dance-hall star Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) in the 1960s.

The first act contains some of Wright’s finest work, and the opening sequence is a marvel. Ellie dances around her home in an elaborate ballgown made of newspaper to Peter and Gordon’s “A World Without Love,” in a scene that speaks to Ellie’s profound nostalgia, her poverty, and her creativity all at the same time. It’s also a reminder of Wright’s affinity for needle-drops. Even before reality distorts, this is a young woman deeply invested in the past: not in an obnoxious, “born in the wrong decade” way, but demonstrative of trauma so potent that distant eras become an escapist salve.

Ellie quickly leaves her sheltered rural British town to begin the long journey to London, a record player and a suitcase of vinyls in tow. London is downright mythic for a dewy-eyed kid like Ellie: the big smoke breathes with centuries worth of dreams. Aspirationalism is one of Last Night in Soho ’s implicit themes, particularly the desire to make a mark on the world, and leave a legacy behind. Where better, then, to place Ellie’s story than the concrete time capsule of London, where myriad hopes have been realized, and legacies are etched into the city’s rebar bones and marble plinths?

Heading to her residence hall, Ellie gets her first lesson in London from a leering taxi driver. “Are you a model?” he asks, practically salivating. For the first time, she sees the insidious imperfections in her fantasy, from perverse cabbies to bully-ish peers. The latter group revolves around Ellie’s deeply insecure roommate Jocasta (Synnove Karlsen), an amalgamation of every The Devil Wears Prada trope under the sun. Wright loves a snappy line-read, and his scripts are always laden with clever quips. Karlsen is given the film’s best: “I tried vaping,” she says, preparing a cigarette, “but it makes you look like a cunt.”

When Ellie leaves the dorm to stay in a bedsit on Goodge Street (leaving aside the realities of a poor kid with a bursary being able to afford the neighborhood’s extortionate rent) Wright’s stylistic flair-ometer shoots to 110. Hopping into bed, lulled into sleep by her vinyls, Ellie is drawn into the past, emerging in Leicester Square. A grandiose Thunderball marquee suggests it’s 1965 — notably, the year of Repulsion .

Matt Smith lights a cigarette while eyeing up Anya Taylor-Joy in Last Night in Soho

The opening strings of Cilla Black’s “You’re My World” sound eerily similar to the famous Psycho score: better fit for a horror film, perhaps, than a romantic pop ballad. Wright’s passion for needle-drops emerges again, as Ellie hears this song as she enters the past. The heady, lovelorn charm of Black’s lyrics eerily juxtapose against the jarring shrillness of the song’s opening notes. And, as it turns out, Black herself is performing the song within the scene, for an adoring crowd of tuxes and frocks. The images are dream-like, a product of Ellie’s deepest nostalgic fantasies — and seemingly Wright’s as well.

That’s just one example of how Wright’s penchant for pop music comes through in Soho . The soundtrack is the catchiest and vibiest, of his filmography — even more so than Baby Driver , which is wall-to-wall bops. On the one hand, he uses iconic ’60s tracks to emphasize the film’s fantasy: As that opening scene establishes, one of the reasons Ellie is so wedded to the past is her adoration of the music.

And it also places the audience in the era. As with Baby Driver , some of the songs are crucially, knowingly on-the-nose: Soon after Soho takes a more explicitly supernatural turn, for example, R. Dean Taylor’s “There’s a Ghost in My House” is cued. It’s enjoyably catchy, but more than thematically pertinent. And as the use of Carla Thomas’ “B-A-B-Y” refers to the eponymous protagonist in Driver , a scene in Soho ’s final act sees Ellie serenaded with a rendition of Barry Ryan’s emphatic foot-tapper “Eloise.”

Some of the later numbers, as Soho switches tonally into something altogether darker, carry terrible irony. When Sandie is pushed to feature in a lewd stage performance, made up like a marionette doll, she dances suggestively to Sandie Shaw’s campy, cabaret-style tune “Puppet on a String.” (Speaking to its campiness, it was the UK’s first Eurovision winner, in 1967.) In another Wrightian subversion, the silliness of the song becomes tragedy, as Sandie’s attempts at stardom head in a dark direction.

Using such an iconic song to underpin her emotional turmoil is a deft directorial choice that also points to Soho ’s most compelling conceit. Wright’s career has been marked by, and wedded to, an adoration of the cultural past. But here, he fights the urge, with the message that nostalgia is just a pair of rose-tinted goggles, obscuring darker realities hidden beneath the glitzy surface.

Anya Taylor-Joy, in a bright white coat, walks the dark streets of Soho in Last Night in Soho

There’s a lot to balance in Soho, though, and Wright isn’t always successful. His previous films are far from vacuous, but they’re comparatively inconsequential. There’s the zombie comedy, the buddy cop/murder mystery, the Body Snatchers homage, the superhero pastiche, and the heist flick. (Which might be his crowning achievement, save for the unfortunate-in-retrospect casting of alleged sex offenders Kevin Spacey and Jamie Foxx.) Wright may have wanted to do something meaningful with his first woman protagonist, but Soho is dealing with far weightier themes than any of its predecessors: abject sexual violence, psychopathy, suicide and depression, memory and trauma.

While he maintains his stylistic pomp and flourish — that aesthetic deftness his fans expect — the characters, plot, and said hefty themes, are thin on the page in the final act. Ellie is drained of agency, her erratic mental state increasingly evocative of Carol’s in Repulsion . She embodies the histrionics that typified the women of classic giallo horror, in a jarring example of Wright’s affinity for homage. A motif where she sees her dead mother in mirrors isn’t fully realized, which inadvertently serves to trivialize her mental trauma.

In one Hammer-esque scene, Wright’s overt stylization explodes into a kaleidoscopic mushroom cloud of showy genre evocation. A victim’s eyes are seen in reflection in the blade of a raised knife, and strawberry sauce gets thrown around the place as the weapon repeatedly descends. While Soho remains a feast for the senses until the very end, framing ongoing sexual violence in such an exploitative fashion risks superficiality, even when he’s consciously evoking giallo, particularly Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace.

Centrally, as a study of Wright’s own nostalgic proclivities, Soho is a fascinating cultural object. He’s demonstrated an interest in the frailty of nostalgia in previous works. In Hot Fuzz and The World’s End , characters are beholden to, and castigated for, unrealistic nostalgia. Stylistically, though, he’s always leaned into homage, again going as far back as Spaced , with its myriad visual and textual references to Hollywood and more esoteric cinema. Homage in itself is adjacent to nostalgia: It’s the celebration, in Wright’s case, of past styles and aesthetics, and deep, wistful love for decades-old cinema percolates through his filmography.

Soho feels like Wright’s most explicit interrogation of his own sentimental impulses, and simultaneously, his most stylistically grandiose work. But central to this story, too, is the violent and lurid exploitation of women. This is certainly Edgar Wright at his Edgar Wright-iest, but even as he’s arguing against celebrating the past in Last Night in Soho , he’s celebrating it himself, in ways that are hard to escape, and at times, harder still to enjoy.

Last Night in Soho opens in theaters Oct. 29.