Last Night in Soho: Things Are Great When You're Downtown - Afterwards, Not So Much

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B

Had I first seen it on Halloween weekend instead of at the Toronto International Film Festival, I might have been more prepared for the hairpin genre-turn in Edgar Wright’s stylish but frustrating Last Night in Soho. As it was, my neck hurt.

The movie is about a young wannabe fashionista (Thomasin McKenzie), who dreams of ‘60s Carnaby Street in London, and through supernatural means, ends up inhabiting or experiencing the life of a young woman of that era (Anya Taylor-Joy), whose own dreams are to be the next Dusty Springfield or Cilla Black.

Thomasin McKenzie (right) finds herself reliving the experiences of ‘60s singer Anya Taylor-Joy

And it ends up being two movies, or one movie cut in half. The first is a whimsical, dark-edged but candy-coloured wish-dream, in which a feisty smalltown protagonist overcomes the abuse of big city fashion school mean-girls and realizes her fantasy to experience the swinging ‘60s. 

The second is a straight-ahead horror movie, with visitations by ghosts of past murder victims, still-living murderers, jump scares and a mystery with a “surprise” ending actual horror fans should be able to easily spot.

I liked that first movie very much.

When we meet Ellie (McKenzie) she is dancing in her room to her grandmother (Rita Tushingham)’s ‘60s albums, surrounded by posters of the era and occasionally catching approving glimpses of her dead mother (played by Aimee Cassettari, in the first hint of the time-hopping aspect of Last Night in Soho). 

Her hand-made clothes and worship of a “scene” that happened a generation before she was born will make her an object of ridicule to her fellow students when she attends school in big, bad unwelcoming London (a lecherous cabbie makes lewd comments to her before she even arrives at the school’s front door). But ironically, her second-hand nostalgia is taken as a kind of originality by the school’s fashion instructors, further infuriating the bullies. 

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

Feeling tormented, Ellie eventually leaves the student residence to rent a modest flat from Ms Collins (the late Diana Rigg, performing with aplomb). Once there, she begins having strange dreams, where she experiences the life of aspiring singer Sandie (Taylor-Joy, who seems to have been born to wear shiny, groovy fashion), and walks the streets of London with such era-earmarks as Sean Connery in Thunderball on a theatre marquee.

These body-jump scenes are the crowning moments in the first half of Last Night in Soho, marked by glimpses of the other in nightclub mirrors, fantastic fashion, smoking (lots of smoking), and what seems like an on-the-cusp ascent of a musical star. Taylor-Joy’s melancholy audition rendition of Downtown has already gone viral. And if nothing else, Last Night in Soho has a terrific soundtrack that can transport you back in time as effectively as Ellie’s dreams.

The cross-time connection between the two young women is so strong that a hickey on Sandie’s neck shows up on Ellie’s in the real-life present.

Cue the second movie. Things go downhill for Sandie when she signs with her boyfriend Jack (Matt Smith) as her manager, and he turns out to be something else entirely. What follows is a story of degradation and, well, murder – or murders. This is not a genre Wright has worked before. Yes, he did the zombie movie Shaun of the Dead, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it as anything but a comedy. There is a straight-faced sincerity required for the kind of horror movie he’s attempting here that may be a stretch for a filmmaker who’s specialized in irony and winks.

I’m a fan of Wright’s work, so I’m disappointed that Last Night in Soho doesn’t hold up on both halves. But the parts that work, work terrifically.

Last Night in Soho. Directed and co-written by Edgar Wright. Stars Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith. Opens in theatres Friday, October 29.