Directed by: Edgar Wright
Starring: Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Terence Stamp
One omnibus movie with everything inside.
First of all: “Last Night in Soho” is a chaotic compilation of styles and genres. You name it- you have it: drama, horror, thriller, gore, socio-political, music, romance, psychedelia, period piece, fantasy… everything.
So is this a good thing or a bad thing?
For someone who likes unusual movies that don’t follow cliches, this could be something interesting. But, if you don’t appreciate a big mess on a big screen- then forget it. It’s not for you…
The visuals are a dominant factor in Last Night in Soho. The director, Edgar Wright, is sketching a colourful collage of themes in different time periods- all through a spiral voyage in the most hidden corners of the mind. Living somebody else’s life; one person exists in the deep imagination of another person who has vivid visions of events that happened in the past. A fight to find the right answers and a battle between dream and reality; spirit and material world.
Atmosphere is also something very prevalent in this movie. Traveling through times and occurrences is powerful and gives the movie so much energy. The moving pictures are making us believe that the imagination is actual and opposite- the actual facts are imaginary.
A fashion school student (Thomasin McKenzie) in London is renting out a room that is being haunted by some old time “ghosts.” She is pressed night by night, everytime she falls asleep, witnessing something from the past where another girl (Anya Taylor-Joy) who looks very much like her is trying to establish a performance career in the big and shiny city. The troublesome sleeper is attempting to tell her, hard to believe, story to everybody else around, including the police- but who’ll listen to those “stories.” The long night suffering through the weirdest dreams eventually leads to the uncovering of a series of tragic events from the past.
There is a lot of music from the 60s in this movie. The songs help to catch the feeling of living in London in the 60s. But generally, they are not necessary. They don’t help at all in the main story of the movie. The imaginative impulse is timeless and placeless so anything added is unnecessary..
“Last night in Soho” is an expensive production. As was mentioned earlier, it’s not a movie for everyone. So the question again is: can it return the investment? Probably not, although it’s a nice bit of marketing releasing the movie right around Halloween. This might help a little bit with the box office scores.
Also, there is already word around that the movie is categorized as horror, so horror genre lovers will probably give this movie a shot. They will most likely be disappointed because this is not a horror movie, it just contains some intense horror fragments.
If the box office doesn’t live up to the producers’ expectations then maybe some award nominations will be a good substitution for the lost money. The fact is, this movie has some exquisite artistic performances. Some Oscar and Golden Globe buzz is in the air in Soho.
