Last Night In Soho - Movie Review

Critics Score - 7 of 10

General Audience Score - 8 of 10

Ghastly apparitions, ghosts to the layman, have been the topic of films of all shapes and sizes for decades and apart from the terror inducing spirits, many have materialized on film in numerous different forms. From the kid friendly Casper to the humorous Slimer and company in the Ghostbuster franchise, to the Patrick Swayze, heart-palpatation inducing Ghost. The mind of Edgar Wright takes on the genre of floating white sheets in his new film Last Night In Soho in a rather unorthodox way. This tale of supernatural forces is rather ambitious and combines elements from Midnight In Paris and The Frighteners, weaving them into a inventive piece of cinema. It’s an easy watch, the almost two hour run cruises by and at first is a glamorous spectacle of fascinating and visually stunning sequences and then kicks into a type of creepy, crime-solving, otherworldly thriller. Although it’s a crowd pleaser that most audiences will get down with and have a great time riding the twists and turns around each corner, eventually the story gets to be a bit too convoluted by the finale. Just when you're hoping this film goes out with a bang, it ends with a fairly standard Last Night In Soho.

SYNOPSIS - The fright night starts with the lovely Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) dancing around her room in a cocktail dress comprised of newspapers. She wants to be a fashion designer and sets off for London with a wish and a dream but soon finds the city life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. After she starts into school and moves in with an elderly lady in her upstairs bedroom, Eloise begins to have dreams and visions of living in 1960’s London as a young lady named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy). As Eloise keeps having these out of body experiences, things go from her enjoying her nightly escapades of the past to experiencing the horrors of city nightlife and the sexual exploitation of women that was common for the times. Once Sandie gets hooked up with Jack (Matt Smith) who can play a 1960’s mobster crook with the best of them, things start to deteriorate further as she continues down a rabbit hole that seemingly has no end. Eloise begins to see ghosts of men from the past who exploited and took advantage of Sandie in her efforts to make a career singing and performing. Eventually these visions start to filter over into Eloise’s modern day reality and the ghastly figures send the film on a kind of sideways trajectory that gets borderline out of control.

Once all the sexually active ghosts’ viagra has worn off and they’ve taken some long cold showers, we’ve been highly entertained and also a bit bewildered by all of it. The film follows Eloise and Sandie, both McKenzie and Taylor-Joy are giving impressive performances, but the themes of sex work, prostitution and exploitation muddled with naked ghosts tormenting young girls overshadows the excellent focus the film starts off with. The direction of the material is solid but I lay most of the problems with the film at the feet of the screenplay. The messiness of the film is most apparent with the story juggling so many elements that are grounded in reality but throw in a bunch of otherworldly entities and tangents and this fast paced train starts to derail. Last Night In Soho is one of the most cinematic and visually stylish of the year and there is some impressive cinematography, production and costume design work present as well. All in all Soho is doing many things right but if there’s one thing you don’t want wrong with your film, it’s the script, because it all starts there.

SUMMARY - After a fantastic first half setup, Soho dives headfirst into the realm of supernatural and ghostly, but really fails to deliver any real scares and instead stays focused on the mysterious, intriguing and thrilling aspects of the story. While the screenplay really bogs down the ending that will leave critics scratching their heads, most will find it's easy enough to enjoy a night out at the movies, even if it is your Last Night In Soho.