This past weekend I finally got to watch Last Night in Soho. I’d been eagerly awaiting the arrival of this movie since first seeing a trailer about 10 years ago (10 years equals approximately a few months in pandemic time).
So.(ho)
First off, from the trailers I saw, it seemed very Hitchcocky, but obviously with a fantastic soundtrack, which Edgar Wright aces every time. He should be hired to do the soundtracks for every movie ever made. One of my absolute favorite aspects of his films is that he always manages to pick the songs that fit perfectly into every scene. Instead of going with the typical new pop sounds, he runs the gamut picking tunes based on lyrics and overall feel which always perfectly overlay the setting.
-Let me insert a gush about the Dire Straits song, “Romeo and Juliet“, circa 1981, from Hot Fuzz that plays in a car after a couple (PLAYING ROMEO AND JULIET IN A PLAY IN THE FILM) get horrifically murdered. Genuis.-
Secondly, I wasn’t sure if this was a drama or thriller or horror because the original trailer seems to have elements of all three genres. Dark scenes, cutting back and forth between the leads Thomasin McKenzie and Anya Taylor-Joy, and Matt Smith who is ethereally creepy with his intense Herman Munster staring, led me to believe that there had to be some incredible plot twist at the end.
After watching it Friday night, I marinated on it for the entire next day. And then another day. Random scenes kept popping up in my memory and I was really trying to decide my overall feelings for the film; did I like it? Did I like it just because its an Edgar Wright film and I haven’t particularly found a movie of his I hate (let’s not talk about The World’s End)?
I think I liked it?
Overall, I kept thinking how sad I felt after watching it, which generally doesn’t happen after I watch horror or thriller movies, despite the typical gruesome murders involved. Usually, its coming down off a rush of adrenaline after the roller coaster of a story line that suddenly changes course twenty minutes from the end and shows you the misdirect that feels like you should have realized it the entire time, especially since you grew up watching Scooby-Doo and therefore should know its ALWAYS the one you don’t expect.
So let’s dissect this.
Full disclosure – don’t read if you haven’t watched the movie cause I’m going to spoil the fuck out of it.
Still here?
Ok. Before I jump in the plot headfirst, quick question:
What the fuck are the accents?
Obviously I’m not from London, Cornwall (wherever the fuck that is), or the Swinging Sixties (which is only equated to Austin Powers for us Americans), but the character Eloise was clearly supposed to be a country bumpkin coming to The Big City For The First Time. However, her barely whispered voice didn’t come close to any native UK intonation I’ve ever heard and the other main character of Sandie sounded an awful lot like a chess playing Beth Harmon – kinda looked like her, too – while everyone else in the film had general British accents.
It starts off with a typical set-up of coming to The Big City For The First Time, which is a little bit of a let down, to be honest. When Nicholas Angel moves to Sandford, Gloucestershire from London, there’s this great scene where as he travels, he slowly loses cell service as he gets further away from civilization. Last Night in Soho felt more old fashioned – young adult Eloise carries a decades old suitcase packed tight with 60s music and underwear (cause what else do you need at whatever age she is supposed to be) to go to fashion school. I’m assuming all her other belongings got shipped there because once school starts, she suddenly has more clothing and found a brush somewhere.
From the start of the film, you know she has The Shine as she glimpses her (dead) mother in a mirror, but there’s no explanation for how long she’s been seeing ghosts. Is she related to Cole Sear? Did she start seeing ghosts after her mom died? Is this a family trait? Does she only see her mom or are there subtle ghosts in the background, a’ la Haunting of Hill House? We’re sent to The Big City wondering if she’s going to start popping pills like Dennis Rafkin to take the edge off seeing the scary specters or if they’re simply trying to prevent her from disaster like the ones Edith Cushing saw.
Classic Mean Girls syndrome begins as soon as she arrives since rural Eloise isn’t from The Big City, so automatically is a joke to her classmates who apparently are from The Big City and her roommate happens to be a Grade A Cunt, taking every chance she gets to side eye literally everything Eloise does, says, or reacts to each situation, while snorting coke in a pub bathroom.
Ok, we get it. Roommate is a bitch. Formulaic Check.
After some unknown amount of time, Eloise can’t take the twattiness anymore and decides to rent a room in a home in Soho. Was this the first week? Two months? She (too) quickly finds a furnished room in the attic of an old building and even though the owner, Ms. Collins, who is an ancient, grumpy hag, demands two months rent up front in addition to two months rent deposit, while telling Eloise how the business next door reeks of garlic and she isn’t allowed to do laundry at night, Eloise jumps on the chance to escape her roommate. Despite no explanation for where she’s getting the money for this king’s ransom or how she has so much of it as an extremely young adult who has been living with her gran, assumingly since her mum died, she ponies up what has to be at least £5,000 for a decent size room with her own bathroom in a 3rd floor walk up.
Now, even though we’ve been led to believe Eloise is secretly rich, the next scene shows her heading straight to a local pub for a job where she gets hired immediately, although she has no experience and is arguably a full time student, but tells the owner she can work any shift needed. Plot hole?
That night, Eloise has a dream about Anya Taylor-Joy, like most people who watched The Queen’s Gambit, Sandie, who is a blonde bombshell trying to become a famous singer without any management to represent her. Sandie immediately catches the attention of Jack, who is played by Matt Smith and not Tom Hiddleston, who has cornered the market on icky well dressed characters, and he locks on her like a dirty heat seeking missile, and promises her the world. Not only does Sandie fall for this skeevy ne’er-do-well, but she purrs out a seductive version of Downtown, which was a memorizing scene, mostly since I had no idea Anya could actually sing. Also, very perfectly, the lyrics fit for the entire layout of the script:
When you’re alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go
Downtown
When you’ve got worries all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help I know
Downtown
Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty
How can you lose?
The light’s so much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares
So go downtown
Things will be great when you’re
Downtown
No finer place for sure
Downtown
Everything’s waiting for you (downtown, downtown)
(Can she sing in more movies, please?)
Eloise is enamored, including the rest of us who will now have Downtown stuck in our heads for several days later (just me?), and wakes up wide eyed with a new idol in Sandie. She dyes her agricultural brown hair blonde and starts designing vintage inspired dresses that Sandie wore in the dream. The Mean Girls aren’t impressed. They also point out a hickey on her neck, which they assume is from a classmate named John, but is apparently from Jack, stylized after Lurch, who was kissing Sandie in The Upside Down, but somehow managed to bruise Eloise’s neck in the real real.
She is excited to go back to sleep to see Sandie again, even though she was able to see her ghost mom by looking in a mirror and we aren’t sure if Sandie is real or an imaginary friend, but in her next dream we find out Jack is actually a pimp who has added Sandie to his collection of wayward ladies who didn’t know enough to kick him in the balls straight off the first time he leered at them with Jonah Ryan smirk.
There’s a montage of men buying Sandie drinks, asking her name, which she changes each time she’s asked, and then her bringing them back to her room (now Eloise’s room), but stops when a man, played in a random cameo by Sam Claflin, says he can get her out of this life.
*My Scooby senses tell me this detail is important and to remember it later*
Eloise wakes up disgusted that her idol has been reduced to a street worker, especially after that fabulous Downtown rendition, and tears up her 60s inspired dress designs in class after a minor meltdown. Distracted for a second, she looks up to see (ghostly?) Sandie with her throat cut and blood all over her dress.
The movie starts to pick up momentum at this point and several things happen in quick succession (and also I’ve only seen the film once, so I can’t remember what order they happen):
- Eloise accepts an offer for a date with John, who is also not from The Big City, so he is kind and friendly, to go to a Halloween party where they kiss and she keeps seeing Sandie and other ghosts (now not just in dreams and mirrors).
- Even though Eloise repeatedly rebuffs John, he acts unlike every other male in the entire universe and patiently gives her chance after chance after goddamn chance to redeem herself, even after she quite literally goes mental while they’re hooking up by imagining Sandie getting murdered in the same bed and he gets chased from the house by Ms. Collins who threatens to kill him.
- Eloise begins seeing ghosts of men fucking everywhere. EV-ER-Y-WHEREEEEE.
- An old man at the pub she works at begins talking to her, which scares her, because old men in pubs are gross? But then he follows her, which actually is creepy, and she almost gets hit by a cab trying to escape. She assumes this old man is Jack because why wouldn’t he still be alive decades later in the exact pub she’s working at, maybe still pimping out blonde girls? Totally plausible.
- She goes to the police to tell them Sandie was murdered by Jack in the 60s and is miffed when they (obviously) make fun of her because THIS IS SERIOUS, MY GHOST DREAM GIRL WAS MURDERED BASED ON A DREAM AND NO ACTUAL EVIDENCE.
- While at the library, not doing any school work, Eloise tries to research Sandie’s murder, but is interrupted by ghost men closing in on her and runs away, almost stabbing her old roommate in the process. Thankfully, John intervenes by grabbing her wrist before she lands the knife and this scary event still isn’t enough for him to break up with her. Clearly, John needs counseling for some deep rooted issues.
Now at a(nother) mental breaking point, Eloise decides to confront the old man in the pub that she knows he is Jack because out of the thousands of old people in the UK, clearly he is The One. He sarcastically answers her questioning about Sandie and finally decides he’s had enough of her fuckery (goddamn, can’t an old guy get a fucking beer without being harassed by some whippersnapper?) and leaves. Ironically, as he’s trying to escape her badgering, he gets hit by a cab.
Whoops.
The owner of the pub mentions his name, which isn’t Jack.
Double whoops.
Flashback to the scene of Sandie talking to a man telling her he can “get her out” of the life and all of us collectively realize the Scooby senses may not have failed us, but definitely didn’t land with Eloise because she didn’t Memorex that plot point to be used later.
Having essentially just bullied an innocent old man to his death, Eloise decides she’s had enough of Merry old Soho and wants to head home to the simple life, where she only saw her mom’s ghost in a mirror and not tons of them flitting about all willy nilly. John, who is still in this for the long goddamn haul, offers to drive her five and a half hours (I gave in and googled it) and she accepts (but doesn’t offer to cover his gas? Rude?). This guy is a fucking unicorn and she just uses him.
They head back to Ms. Collins’ place so she can gather her old suitcase, music, and underwear, and she asks John to wait in the car, but to check on her if she doesn’t come out in X amount of time. Ms. Collins invites her in to her sitting room and explains that a police officer came around essentially for a welfare check and then spills the beans that Eloise isn’t going anywhere.
BIG REVEAL- MS COLLINS IS SANDIE!!
Lots of things set in at once – Sandie wasn’t murdered, she is still very much alive (albeit cantankerous and no longer singing) and very much a fucking serial killer, knocking off Jack and all the men who he set her up with and then hiding the bodies in the house floorboards.
What in the Dennis Nilsen / John Wayne Gacy / “THEY DIDN’T MOVE THE BODIES!!!!” craziness is this??
Old Sandie (formerly known as Ms. Collins) informs Eloise she is next on the list, because she doesn’t need the police sniffing around her graveyard collection of douchebags and she’s poisoned Eloise’s tea.
*Classic evil British move, btw; nice*
As Eloise is suddenly catching the effects, John decides the exact amount of time he was told to wait in the car is now up and he comes to get her. Old Sandie invites him in, stabs the fuck out of him, and he collapses on the ground (still alive). Although Eloise is drugged (with what?? She’s still moving and thinking clear enough to get up and try to help John), she manages to start a Midsommar size bonfire in the sitting room with a single tossed cigarette. Apparently the entire room was soaked in gasoline?
Instead of leaving the house, which is now definitely on fucking fire, Eloise starts half hallucinating while backing up the stairs while Old Sandie / visions of young Sandie is swiping at her with a giant knife. Instead of rightfully kicking the bitch down the stairs, which any decent human would do, she retreats to her 4 months worth of rented room, locks the door, and is promptly captured by the ghosts of the murdered men who beg her to kill Sandie.
Wait. What? I meannnnn, yeah they got butchered by Sandie back in the 60s, but they also were using and abusing this singer turned forced sex worker so maaaaybe they kinda deserved it? Fuck. Are we supposed to be helping dudes who take advantage of young women now? Maybe if this was Crimson Peak and the lead was Tom Hiddleston, we’d be cheering on the murdered asshole who didn’t give a fuck while he was alive, but now that he’s dead as fuck we want him to win, butttttt… Jack isn’t played by Tom Hiddleston. He’s played by Matt Smith who definitely looks like he belongs in a haunted house made entirely of grave-robbed dicks.
At any rate, Sandie gets in the room, which is now somehow on fire three stories up because this whole house is made of straw, and Jack, who is not played by Tom Hiddleston, bitch slaps her back to the 60s. She decides she isn’t going with the police, who are now outside because I’m sure the neighbors houses have all burned down by this point, and tries to cut her own throat. Eloise stops her and hugs her (??) and says she understands why she murdered all those guys (yeah…obvi.) and Sandie tells her to get out.
Eloise manages to get back to the first floor, losing no hair or getting any burns on her whatsoever, because she is a flame retardant person and helps get John (also a flame retardant person) out of the house, where he makes a full recovery after being stabbed right in the fucking stomach. Assumingly, Sandie perishes in the flames.
Some time later, Eloise showcases her redone 60s line of couture dresses to great acclaim from her teacher and about two classmates. Her gran and John are there, because of course he is, because of course if a man writes a man in a movie, this is exactly how they imagine every man is in real life. They come backstage to tell her how proud they are and now Eloise sees not only her mom, but young Sandie in the mirror.
Fin.
My takeaway points:
- A movie about a woman forced into sex work is really goddamn sad no matter how many thrills and chills you throw in.
- Somewhat obvious plot twist with too many things alluding to it from the start.
- If you’re going to have actresses from a specific place, maybe call Kate Winslet to help them with their accents.
- Great soundtrack (as always).
- Lots of plot holes and not enough backstory.
- The cinematography interchanging Eloise and Sandie was fantastic and was a welcome distraction from the flat portions of the film.
Overall Grade: B