‘Last Night in Soho’ is Edgar Wright’s darkest film, a thriller with disturbing moments shot with an exquisite gaze, which does not hide a tricky ending that tarnishes the grotesque show
‘Last Night in Soho’ is a delight for the billboard, a breath of fresh air in a panorama that is desperately seeking a clear increase in box office revenues when we are threatened again with possible restrictions that will probably affect especially the cultural sector. The specialized press praises it wherever it goes and just a few days ago it won the public’s sweet award at the San Sebastian Horror and Fantasy Film Week, although as a generously produced film it does not need this type of accolade to promote itself.
Visually overwhelming, shot with media and head, it offers a captivating show starring Thomasin McKenzie, seen in the redeemable ‘Leave No Trace’, and Anya Taylor-Joy, fashionable face after the undeniable success of the ‘Lady’s Gambit’ series, Although her remarkable talent has long drawn attention in films to be discovered as the great ‘Pureblood’. Both actresses shine with their own light in the latest from Edgar Wright, who has definitely decided to join the mainstream after ‘Baby Driver’. Far is his twisted sense of humor in estimable proposals such as ‘Shaun of the Dead’ aka ‘Zombies Party’. Here he manages to cajole the devoted viewer, multiplying the best and worst of Hitchcock by a thousand, as well as cooking multiple references that will delight genre film fans.
The Italian giallo, also the musical, is latent and cites masterpieces such as ‘Vertigo’, with a careful aesthetic and memorable sequences that hide a somewhat tricky story, with an ending as effective, and effective, as predictable. The defects can be virtues in the face of the general public. The young students concentrating on the Sitges festival liked it a lot, stunned by the efficient technical deployment of the film.
If you have to put some but to ‘Last night in Soho’ it is its poor outcome, chewed up enough that it staggers under the prism of the gender perspective, which does not mean that the show deserves to be enjoyed especially on the big screen. McKenzie and Taylor-Joy are amazing, heading up the cast of a psychological thriller that touches on drama, horror and comedy. They play respectively a naive design student, recently arrived in London at a fashion school, and a singer without fortune who is forced to sell her body to survive. Both roles coexist in harmony until the final explosion, when everything fits to find out who, or who, have trampled on the life of the second.
Anya Taylor-Joy and Matt Smith on the set of ‘Last Night in Soho’.
There is a film noir plot with some murder involved … and ghosts. The unsatisfactory resolution does not mean that the trip to the final turn is extremely fun, with an unleashed Wright who plans every camera movement and staging to the millimeter, harvesting in this sense his best film, although others stand out more for their soul, free of the need to gloat in himself as a filmmaker.
‘Last night in Soho’ moves chronologically between two times, the present and the sixties, in a game of mirrors that builds intrigue. The skill of the British director behind the camera is too evident, which does not mean that the result also dazzles the dedicated audience.
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