Last night in Soho (2021) ** – Seen at the Cinema

Genre mish-mash – sci-fi time travel time (sort of) and horror – just doesn’t come off and Anya Taylor-Joy blows the acting kudos she acquired for the Queen’s Gambit Netflix series. Honestly, we don’t care how people are transported to the past or the future but the journey has to be somehow worthwhile. If there is a such a thing for a fashion student, Eloise (Tomasin McKenzie) is somewhat on the nerdy side and when she ends up in an attic flat near London’s Soho she begins to inhabit the body of wannabe singer Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) whose ambitions over half a century previously took her no further than the seediest pockets of seedy crime. Eloise’s visions of recreating 1960s glamour disintegrate and she’s soon slap-bang in the middle of a horror story with leering men bursting out of the walls.

It’s always difficult to keep focus on two storylines, even when they appear to converge, but when they are over half a century apart the constant jumping back and forth is just irritating. The seediness is realistic enough, punter response to learning Sandie’s real or fake name is invariably “that’s a nice name.”  There’s a dodgy boyfriend (Matt Smith), mean girl (Synnove Karlsen) and an odd landlady (Diana Rigg) and that’s about as far as this stretches in terms of characterization. And if your bag is to spot the old-timer, then you will get glimpses of Terence Stamp (The Collector, 1963) and Rita Tushingham (The Knack, 1965) not to mention The Avengers (BBC, 1965-1968) television series reincarnation Rigg.

It’s not scary enough, fashionable enough, seedy enough, or 1960s enough – only a token nod to the period with a soundtrack from the decade and a few scenes with characters in the correct clobber or cars. It might just have worked if it had been the one actress playing both female parts because that at least might have been interesting to observe. Thomasin McKenzie (Old, 2021) is passable as the naïve young thing called upon to mostly look petrified. Anya Taylor-Joy (The New Mutants, 2020) brings nothing to a role that is just a cliché. Point the finger at Edgar Wright, whose Baby Driver (2017) I thought was a sign of him having turned a corner from previous misfires.

Author: Brian Hannan

I am a published author of books about film - over a dozen to my name, the latest being "When Women Ruled Hollywood." As the title of the blog suggests, this is a site devoted to movies of the 1960s but since I go to the movies twice a week - an old-fashioned double-bill of my own choosing - I might occasionally slip in a review of a contemporary picture. View all posts by Brian Hannan