Last Night in Soho really had me hypnotized. I feel like that's a comment that will be said by a lot of people, but that's exactly the kind of effect this film has. Edgar Wright brings us a dreamy, groovy ghost story that heavily pays tribute to Suspiria, along with other film classics from the 60s and 70s. Being Britain's top film junkie, Edgar Wright can get a hold of a camera and make it seem like you're walking into a video store at full blast. His love of this specific genre of horror is just gushing here. His love of music is also as romantic as ever. Music plays just as important of a role here as it did in Baby Driver, even if the songs aren't full-on characters of their own. Mackenzie and Taylor-Joy carry this film fully on their shoulders, and by God, do they rock it. I've been incredibly impressed with Thomasin Mackenzie since Jojo Rabbit, and if this film doesn't rocket her career all the way to the top, nothing will. There's so much to love about this movie. It's a trace. No, it's a trip.

His conquered the living dead with nothing more than unwanted vinyl records, alien invaders in small country towns and even managed to wrangle baby drivers but there's no doubt Last Night in Soho is beloved British director and critical darling Edgar Wright's most ambitious film yet and a film that doesn't always reach the lofty goals it sets for itself even if its a beautifully shot and unique thriller mixed with horror elements.

His first film narrative feature film since Baby Driver in 2017, Soho is undoubtedly a labor of love for Wright who produces his most un-Wright feeling film yet, that follows Thomasin McKenzie's country girl fashion designer to London, where her rental of a small bedroom apartment leads her to experience vivid and increasingly frightening visions into the life of a seemingly real London resident of the 60's named Sandie (a mesmerizing Anya Taylor-Joy) creating a very late 60's/70's feeling feature that struggles to keep itself on the rails as the runtime wears on.

Magnificently capturing the time and place of the London era of the setting with help from Old Boy and Handmaiden cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung (delivering Oscar worthy work) and some eclectic and toe tapping concoction of classic tunes from the era that once more suggests Wright is right up there with Quentin Tarantino when it comes to sound-tracking his films and particular scenes, Soho has a lot to admire and for its first 30 to 40 minutes things rollick along at a great pace with a lot of intrigue in what's happening and what's around the corner but the film does get into a mid to late section funk that becomes both repetitive and a little too much to handle narrative wise.

You can see what Wright was trying too do and how he wanted his film to evolve but that doesn't excuse the loop we end up getting stuck in and the sometimes questionable choices that Eloise makes (with some added overacting by a trying hard but not always hitting the mark McKenzie) and while visually and atheistically everything is always of a very high standard, there's a coldness to the story of Soho and it never quite works as well as you'd like as a mystery or a fully fledged horror that it at times appears to be wanting to be.

In amongst all of the narrative let downs and feeling that it never quite hits the marks it sets for itself is the continued great work of Taylor-Joy whose growing into one of the most interesting actors working today, a fairly chilling performance from the usually likable Matt Smith and a central plot that at the very least doesn't play things out in the usual schtick, making Soho far from a complete misfire but nothing more than an intriguing could've been film that I am sure Wright and his fanbase will look back on in days to come as a missed opportunity to create something spectacular.

Final Say -

A film that sets itself a tricky task its never fully able to handle, Last Night in Soho is a high quality feature that can't ever quite juggle its various elements into a final product that feels worthy of its goals.

3 Vesper's out of 5.

One night is enough! This film is so over rated. The writing is so bad. The lead girl over acts from start to end. The bad CGI dead men who slept with Sandy look worse than the CGI zombies in I am Legend. I don't think horror when I see that. I just see the weak CGI. The guys who slept with sandy are not creepy at all. Their intent on getting laid is a bit creepy like sad pervs. But using them like some undead legions was zero on the creepy meter. The over used "that's a beautifiul name" was a weak line and they beat it to death. The Argento comparisons only go as far as some of the lighting. It comes nowhere near the golden era of his films from the 70's, 80s. Maybe anything from Trauma onward. You just knew that Diana Rigg wasn't just put in the film to be a quaint, old landlady. She's set up to be the last one you'd ever suspect. How do you see the ghost of a woman who is still alive?! The whole, you thought this character was the killer but wait no! It's actually this person. Obvious red herrings. You could se all of those coming up. I really wanted to like Last night but it was so bad on so many levels. The characters were so one dimensional cliches. I couldn't identify enough to get invested or care. The love interest black guy was good, but he was written, directed to be a doormat, weak whiny chump. This film isn't some glorious gumbo of film styles. It doesn't know if it wants to be a 60's throwback, a thriller mystery, a horror, a serial killer movie, a young woman going mad ala repulsion, a ghost ,supernatural film about a living person? The reviews are so over hyped. People just eat up anything and call it amazing these days. The characters are pretty much all horrible people, which is actually fine, but they're boring and movie characters should never be that. They aren't compromised in any interesting way, they're just oblivious to their own actions and have careless morality. The film also turns into a lazy "me too" thriller mid way through that left me pretty cold. The last 20 minutes or so are incredibly stupid and might have been my favorite thing about the movie, but probably not in the way the filmmaker intended. I just watched in awe at how morally bankrupt and forced everything became. A very petty and dumb movie in almost every way. A true stinker. Edgar Wright can make an excellent film, but there's zero evidence to that fact on display here.