Outside the Blue Box: Last Night in Soho (2021)

All you need to see is the recent viral clip of Matt Smith expressing amazement that Keanu Reeves was watching Morbius on a flight, and you’ll realise that the former Eleventh Doctor’s film career has been spotty to say the least. From the bizarre experiments (Lost River), to the aborted franchise restarter (Terminator Genisys), to indie genre misfires (Patient Zero), Smith has tried his hand at many different projects that haven’t really worked. Not because of him per se, as he is literally the one good thing in Morbius, but it felt like he was being cast in projects that didn’t quite know what to do with him.

Therefore, him joining up with acclaimed British director Edgar Wright for a psychological horror-thriller sounds like a really interesting prospect. But while this film may be in the upper end of Matt Smith’s filmography, when it comes to the work of Wright, it’s unfortunately towards the bottom. 

Edgar Wright has tried many genres on for size, and he’s even mixed and matched them before to great effect. Shaun of the Dead, his breakthrough movie and one of the best genre films of the 21st century, crosses zombie action with a rom-com, and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World does the same thing but with the superhero genre. Last Night in Soho sees him playing things more straight, with a psychological horror-thriller following an ambitious and precocious young girl named Ellie moving down to London to study fashion, and experiencing visions of a crime that took place during the Swinging Sixties.

It’s commendable to see Wright doing something comparatively out of his wheelhouse, and the first act is slow but strong. We get to know Thomasin McKenzie’s lead character well, and there’s a good tone established here. The hallucinations of a mysterious woman, revealed to be Ellie’s late mother, lets us know that events aren’t fully grounded in normality, but there’s enough realism in the sequence of events of Ellie moving to university, encountering flat trouble, going on awkward nights out, for those hallucinatory instances to stand out all the more.

Thomasin McKenzie is giving a great performance, and Diana Rigg (in her last film role before her death in 2020) delivers fantastic and enigmatic work as per usual. Matt Smith is used sparingly throughout, but the scenes featuring him are pivotal, and he nails the charisma of his teddy-boy persona that eventually gives way to a sinister sleaziness. Anya Taylor-Joy begins as the most superficial character in the film, though this is perhaps understandable given her initial arrogance when walking into the 60’s club enquiring about a job as a singer. However, the tale of Sandie quickly turns equal parts tragic and terrifying.

The other notable performance for me is by the late Terence Stamp, who plays an unnamed older gentleman Ellie keeps running into, and someone who clearly knows something about the mystery from the 1960s. It’s understandable why Wright would choose Stamp for a role like this, as he is able to bring this really alluring quality to a character that is essentially a mystery box on legs. His appearances are few, but nonetheless memorable.

The only person who doesn’t really pull their weight, bizarrely, is Edgar Wright. 

Wright’s style by this point was set in stone – dynamic visuals, whip-pans, needle-drops, fast-paced montages. Even his move to America with Scott Pilgrim and Baby Driver saw him further hone his signature style. Last Night in Soho sees him deliberately scaling back with a slower, richer visual palette, with more dreamlike editing to match the film’s frequent visions of a past life. There’s still elements of Wright’s brand here, for certain – the fixation on 60’s music is not only a key aspect of Ellie’s character, but emblematic of the man who made the Queen bar fight in Shaun of The Dead or the action sequences in Baby Driver. However, for large stretches of Last Night in Soho, it feels like Wright is sacrificing his distinctive flair to fit the story, not allowing it to drive the story forward.

It’s still well-helmed, but his signature camera moves and kinetic pacing is considerably neutered. Especially when you consider that he co-wrote this script (alongside Krysty Wilson-Cairns, who worked with Sam Mendes on the acclaimed 1917), it’s surprising that the direction and the script feel this disparate. The scenes involving Smith do show Wright using his usual box of tricks in fresh and fun new ways, and if there was more of that then maybe I’d be less disappointed. But for a director this well-known for a certain style, it stings to see it mostly missing.

The story itself is strong, if a little underwhelming given all the elements it’s playing with. The mystery of what happened to Sandie in the 1960s, and why this is suddenly important now, is an investing one, but it succumbs to some pacing issues around the middle and takes a little too long to really get going. Last Night in Soho is just shy of two hours, but probably could’ve done with ten to fifteen minutes shaved off, and the central mystery being less tangential in the first half. The psychological elements of the narrative, with Ellie being consumed by the visions she is seeing and the unsolved mystery involving Sandie, feel a bit undercooked so by the time we get to the climax, you don’t feel ready for the huge swings that the film takes. 

I don’t want to sound too down on Last Night in Soho, and the positives outweigh the negatives. The cast are all great, the film still looks really good, and the commitment to the 1960s elements of the narrative is admirable. However, it ultimately ends up being less than the sum of its parts, with the lack of Wright’s distinct charm doing it a disservice, as well as a script that can’t realise its more lofty ambitions.

Still, it’s nice to see Matt Smith in something where he doesn’t have to carry the entire project on his back.