Last Night in Soho (2021)

(On Cable TV, July 2022) On paper, Last Night in Soho doesn’t sound all that promising, but if any filmmaker has earned my automatic interest, it’s writer-director Edgar Wright: His sense of cinema is close enough to mine that whatever he does is worth watching as far as I’m concerned, with no prior questions asked. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to ask questions during or after the film. Last Night in Soho is clearly an outlier in his filmography so far: slower paced, slightly more sedate, more leisurely edited and not quite as humorous as his previous films, it also features female protagonists and goes back in time for its topic matter. Much of the story revolves around a modern-day young woman (Thomasin McKenzie) coming to London to study fashion—but spending her nights in unusually immersive dreams that follow another young woman (Anya Taylor-Joy) in late-1960s London, as she too comes to the city with big dreams. The first half-hour of Last Night in Soho climaxes in a gorgeous historical re-creation of the glitz and glamour of the Swingin’ Sixties, executed with as much slickness as modern filmmaking allows. But this being a 2021 film, nothing stays fun for a long time: Much of the second act follows the historical heroine’s descent into prostitution as dreams are dashed, men take advantage of her and the glamour of nostalgia cracks under examination. The film burns through this plotline midway through, turning its attention to the modern echoes of these past events. The ghost story aspect of the tale comes across more clearly in an unexpected fashion, bringing the film back to genre material more familiar to Wright. It wraps up with an incendiary climax that should satisfy most of his fans. This being said, I have a number of issues with the film’s ultimate message that prostitution justifies mass murder as long as the victims are middle-aged white men, but that’s almost the default message of far too many movies these days, so I should just note and move on. What’s more impressive are the performances of the two young pleads, plus a deliciously villainous turn by Matt Smith and a decent last turn from Diana Rigg. In the end, the final result justifies continued sight-unseen interest in Wright’s next work: the slick polish of the film, its genre-blending plotting and ability to create interest where other filmmakers would stumble ensure that, even if Last Night in Soho is nowhere near his best work, it’s still a demonstration of skill from an engaging filmmaker. [May 2026: Harumph. Weirdly enough, I’m feeling a lot less positive about Last Night in Soho and Edgar Wright in general these days. His take on The Running Man was mediocre, and now I’m thinking that maybe even Baby Driver wasn’t all that. Not everyone keeps the “no prior questions asked” status.]