Skip to main content

Last Night in Soho (2021)

 




Last Night in Soho is a horror movie, surprisingly. It's also directed by Edgar Wright. Is this a dream? Someone, please make sense to me how this got made.

Written and directed by Edgar Wright, Soho is about a fashion designer who without spoiling the film starts to uncover a murder mystery from the 1960s and has to make sense of it all. It has everything you want from Wright's transitions and self-references but missing the comedy of his previous films. I feel like this movie was made on a dare much in the same way American Graffiti was made. 

Thomasin McKenzie has really developed as an actress both in her ability to convey emotion but also with how she loses herself in the role. The last time I saw her was in Jojo Rabbit and True History of the Kelly Gang and I look forward to The Power of the Dog later this year. She plays the main character and does a wonderful job with her accent too. I can't go into detail about what happens to her without spoiling the film but she's certainly an actress to be on the lookout for from now on and carries this film. It would not be the same without her.

Anya Taylor-Joy has been great in so many films that it's easy to see her in this role as a 1960's aspiring singer. You might know her from The Queen's Gambit, but I know her from The Witch and Split. She's been in so much and yet she's so young and people don't give her enough credit. I can't wait to see her take on the role of Furiosa.

The film has a lot of themes and in a way is a feminist movie but written and directed by a man. The character does things that fly in the face of what a man would do in the same situation which might be the help from the screenplay writer  Krysty Wilson-Cairns and I'm curious how much she changed from Wright's original story. That might sound scary calling this horror film a feminist movie but it's not in your face or shaming the audience in a way that many other films have in recent history. I'm looking at you Birds of Prey. It takes a tactful approach towards handling the mistreatment of women, especially in 1960's London.

There's no other film like it to compare it to and my closest feelings on it lie somewhere between Red Sparrow (2018) and Ex Machina (2015) both of which earned an A- in my book. I can say this is a great film with only one minor flaw in the convoluted way the movie ended.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is This Thing On? (2025)

Is This Thing On? (2025) is a small scale character study about a man dealing with separation and emotional stagnation by throwing himself into stand up comedy. The film is written and directed by Bradley Cooper , known primarily for A Star Is Born and Silver Linings Playbook , and this feels like his attempt at something quieter and more introspective. The tone is subdued and personal, sometimes to the film’s advantage, but often it feels hesitant and unsure of what it wants to say. Will Arnett , best known for Arrested Development and BoJack Horseman , stars as the recently separated father and also helped write the script. Arnett is solid and believable, leaning into a restrained performance rather than his usual comedic extremes. His stand up scenes feel intentionally awkward, which works thematically, but they rarely land as either funny or revealing in a meaningful way. Laura Dern , known for Marriage Story and Jurassic Park , plays the ex wife and is intentionally written ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Primate (2026)

Primate (2026) is a slasher horror built around a simple hook, a rabid monkey on a killing spree, but it leans far too heavily on genre tropes without doing anything interesting with them. Logical inconsistencies are the film’s biggest issue, with characters repeatedly making baffling decisions that pull you out of the experience. Several deaths are outright spoiled in the trailer, which drains what little tension the film manages to build. The trailer would, wrongfully, make you believe that the audience is being scared the same way Paranormal Activity did. There is also an unfortunate character design choice that feels engineered purely for clout rather than story or theme. Johnny Sequoyah , who some may remember from Assassination Nation and the TV series Dexter: New Blood , is positioned early on as the clear final girl. The film telegraphs this so hard that there is never any real suspense about her survival. Once she is framed as the moral and emotional center, the rest of the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Five Night's At Freddy's 2 (2025)

  Five Night's At Freddy's 2  is the sequel to the video game movie released in 2023.  Director Emma Tammi is lucky the fanbase is showing up for her movie. Without them she would be a complete unknown and with her ability to direct she would remain as such. Scott Cawthon can write video games but when it comes to realistic or natural dialogue between children he can't help himself. Piper Rubio  cannot act well. The way she delivers lines is as if the director didn't ask her to try again. With how cheap these movies are made I imagine that was how it went. No way was this the seventh take.  Elizabeth Lail  is probably the best of the main characters while Mckenna Grace seems to be in the movie just so they could say she was. She really feels out of place with her ability to act compared to these main characters.  Horror veterans will be happy to see Skeet Ulrich  and Matthew Lillard  return to the same movie but they should have had a scene t...
Post a Comment
Read more