3 Short Paragraphs: Last Night in Soho

2021, Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz) -- download

I am pretty sure this appeared during the last week of our 31 Days of Halloween from 2021, but for some reason we never watched it. Maybe I was not sure it was a true horror flick, and something more left for Kent's HorrorNotHorror tagline, but no, it was indeed a somewhat scary "ghost" story albeit more about being steeped in the fashion and nightlife of 1960s London.

Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie, Old) is young woman from small town / rural England who leaves the over-protective eye of her grannie for fashion school in London. She is obsessed in the Swinging 60s music and culture, something she ties to her mother who committed suicide while Ellie was a child. At school, Ellie is awkward and distant, not fitting in with the other girls, especially after she begins zoning out from night dreams that fade into daydreams, where she is a passive observer / inhabitant of a beautiful young woman trying to make it in the London 60s music scene, but is dragged into its much more seedy underbelly. Ellie is becomes convinced that Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy, The VVitch) is more than a dream, that she is the haunting of a real girl who died tragically at the hands of her manipulative pimp Jack (Mat Smith, Doctor Who).

Wright definitely has a desire for each of his movies to have style. While few could identify them as a Wright movie directly, besides the Cornetto Trilogy, he likes his movies to stand out from the crowd. This one drips with his fondness for the Soho area of London in the 60s, while acknowledging very loudly that it was not exactly .. innocent. Anya Taylor-Joy just fucking embodies the character of Sandie, a girl who came to London to be a singer, understanding that seduction was to be a part of it, but who gets lost in the outcome. The fashion, the music, the colours and the psychedelia that Wright uses to depict the horror and dream sequences are enthralling. While the horror movie aspect is more traditional, it felt made for teenage girls who will get wrapped up in Ellie's story, and squeal and hide their eyes at the grim imagery. All in all, I do wish we had watched this during the October season.