phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2022

Last Night in Soho



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2021
Runtime: 1h 56m
Country: UK, China
Language: English
Genre Tags: Drama, Horror, Mystery
Plot Summary: An aspiring fashion designer is mysteriously able to enter the 1960s where she encounters a dazzling wannabe singer. But the glamour is not all it appears to be and the dreams of the past start to crack and splinter into something darker.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: What a hot mess of a movie. Edgar Wright is obviously going for a giallo pastiche, but can't keep the style under control. The story is all over the place, doesn't add up to anything, and devolves into a confusing mess of underwhelming horror tropes in the third act. It sort of wants to say something about how awful men treat women, but ultimately just shrugs on the subject. Also, the only person of color in this movie gets falsely accused of rape, which the movie sort of tosses aside as a vague plot point. Dick move, script. Music and costumes were cool, though you could just watch a better movie from the actual 1960s for the same things.


Outside Reviews:

Robert Daniels
1.5 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

Beyond the initial themes, such as zealotry to the past and toxic men—there's just not enough to carry the film. Wright doesn't have anything to say about the sex industry, the casting couch or mental health beyond a surface-level understanding. Instead, he relies on cornball humor, copious blood and gore, and homages to far better films. Normally that'd be enough, and it has been in the past, but the tonality doesn't quite square with the film's heavy subjects this time. In fact, the twist ending won't surprise many.


Katie Rife
Grade: B- - Edgar Wright tries his hand at throwback thrills in the flawed, stylish Last Night In Soho

Set alternately in present-day Soho and in the semi-mythical "swinging London" of the 1960s, Wright's new movie, Last Night In Soho, draws inspiration from cinematic styles popular half a century ago. Chief among these is the "woman losing her grip on reality" trope popularized by Roman Polanski's 1965 film Repulsion. But Wright also incorporates elements of the sexy Italian murder mysteries known as giallo. (He's certainly got the Dario Argento-style colored lighting down.) It can be truly excruciating to litigate the boundaries of genre. So let's just say that Last Night In Soho is giallo in at least one big respect: Like many of those films, it starts off with a strong concept, then crumbles when it's time to move beyond striking imagery and get down to the more functional aspects of storytelling.