Last Night in Soho

"Last Night in Soho reinforces biases against sex workers and people with mental illness."

Title: Last Night in Soho (2021)
Director: Edgar Wright 👨🏼🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿
Writers: Screenplay by Edgar Wright 👨🏼🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 and Krysty Wilson-Cairns 👩🏼🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 based on the story by Edgar Wright 👨🏼🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Reviewed by Alicja Johnson 👩🏼🇺🇸

—MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 2/5

Just when you think you’ve seen every iteration of “small town girl moves to the big city in pursuit of her dreams,” Last Night in Soho struts into theaters with a psychological twist to the formula. In the newest film from Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver), Thomasin McKenzie plays doe-eyed Ellie, an aspiring designer who relocates to London’s Soho neighborhood for her first year at a prestigious university to study fashion.

Unfortunately, Ellie’s countryside background, affinity for baby doll dresses, and clairvoyant peculiarities make her a target of bullying from her posh classmates. Her student housing quickly becomes unbearable, pushing Ellie to rent a cheap room where sleeping transports her to the 1960s and into the shoes of Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy). In pursuit of a singing career, Sandie wears the flowy dresses that Ellie adores and exudes the confidence Ellie craves, so much so that Ellie dyes her hair blonde to match and begins designing pieces inspired by the specter’s wardrobe. But soon, Sandie’s story takes a gory turn, and Ellie finds herself trying to solve the young woman’s murder 60 years too late.

Wright has made a name for himself with his stylish cinematography, and Last Night in Soho does not disappoint in that regard. Creative mirror shots that connect Ellie and Sandie during dream sequences are particularly entrancing to watch. Aside from the visual flair, McKenzie and Taylor-Joy are the best part of the film, embodying their characters to perfection.

But there’s no real substance here, largely due to a messy screenplay that manages to be simultaneously confounding and predictable. Imagery is prioritized over story, as if Wright left screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns naught but set pieces, between which she had to connect the dots and build an internal logic from thin air. If you end the movie scratching your head in confusion about what you just watched, you’re not alone.

Gender: 3.5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

From creating the quintessential manic pixie dream girl in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) to reducing female characters to tropes in Baby Driver (2017), Wright has never given much thought to how he portrays women. On paper, Last Night in Soho marks a massive improvement for the filmmaker.

For starters, this is the first time Wright has included female leads. It’s also his first collaboration with a female screenwriter, and Wilson-Cairns’ influence makes a world of difference. When the director first began writing Last Night in Soho, Wright planned to make the dream sequences silent, meaning that Taylor-Joy’s character would have no lines at all. Wilson-Cairns suggested that Sandie would need an actual personality in order for Ellie to become infatuated with her ‘60s girl crush, which is how Sandie ultimately ends up with dialogue. Wilson-Cairns likely contributed to the 10 named female characters in the story, as well—a huge upgrade over the paltry tally of two in Wright’s previous (and male-dominated) film, Baby Driver.

And yet the many women we encounter through Last Night in Soho feel two-dimensional at best. In fairness, all of the film’s characters lack substance regardless of gender, but it’s disappointing to see Wright’s first attempt at telling a female-centric story featuring the most poorly developed protagonists among his filmography. Each feels like a stereotype: For example, Ellie’s late mother (Amieé Cassettari) committed suicide while pursuing her own dream of becoming a fashion designer, but she exists only as a tragic backstory for her daughter. With her vaguely defined uniqueness and inability to fit in with her peers, Ellie herself seems to fall under the “not like the other girls” label, a trope that suggests that she’s special enough to “overcome” the overall inferiority of her gender.

The filmmakers dig themselves into a deeper hole with Sandie’s character. As she tries to work her way into a singing career, a charming manager (Matt Smith) opens doors for her, at first giving her easy success that seemingly confirms Ellie’s imagined nostalgia for the ‘60s. Ellie’s view of her favorite decade quickly changes, however, once the manager coerces Sandie into prostitution for his club’s patrons, eventually murdering her (in Ellie’s dreams, at least). At this point in the story, it seems as though Wright wants to remind the audience that London’s “Swinging Sixties” cultural revolution only guaranteed glitz and glam for white men. Yet things take a turn in the finale, when we learn that Sandie was never murdered—it was she who murdered hundreds of her male clients.

This depiction of a sex worker is troubling to say the least. While there are certainly individuals forced into it against their will, available statistics on the topic falsely imply that the vast majority enter the trade due to exploitation. At the same time, movies like Last Night in Soho reinforce that bias by depicting sex work as unilaterally degrading, nonconsensual, and morally deplorable. As writer Kaitlyn Booth notes, the film demonizes the industry when anyone who actually stops to listen to what sex workers want will find out what they seek is decriminalization of their job.

Race: 1/5

For a film that takes place in one of the UK’s most diverse cities, Last Night in Soho has an awfully white cast. Ellie’s classmate John, played by British Nigerian Michael Ajao as the sole actor of color, sees his biggest contribution to the plot during consensual sex with Ellie that ends with him violently chased from her bedroom under the threat of having the cops called. The film completely glosses over the fact that Ellie placed her friend in such a dangerous situation. Film critic Rendy Jones laments the problematic treatment of the movie’s only Black character, calling this particular scene “one of the most intense and egregiously tone-deaf scenes [they’ve] seen this year.”

Deduction for Disability: -0.50

The horror genre has a nasty habit of using mental illness as plot fodder, usually to the detriment of real-life people who have these conditions. For starters, the film treats Ellie’s mother’s suicide with unnecessary taboo. Though Ellie has already lost her mother when Last Night in Soho begins, characters use her death and family history of schizophrenia as reasons to doubt Ellie’s competence when she moves to London. So when Ellie dreams her way into hallucinations and delusions in Soho—symptoms common in schizophrenia—the film essentially validates that prejudice.

Last Night in Soho is just one of a long list of films that sensationalize the illness. Movies with schizophrenic patients typically paint their behavior as violent, contributing to the discrimination faced by individuals living with the disease despite the vast majority being nonviolent. Sure enough, Ellie nearly stabs one of her classmates, implying that her mental illness is to blame. If only Wright and Wilson-Cairns had refrained from connecting Ellie’s behavior to schizophrenia, the film would be far less harmful.

Mediaversity Grade: D 2.00/5

We love seeing creators experiment with different perspectives in their storytelling, as Wright did for Last Night in Soho. But the director’s failure to consider how he portrays women, people of color, and those with mental illnesses makes this film a flop.

Like Last Night in Soho? Try these other titles featuring unreliable protagonists.

Grade: DLiNovember 14, 2021Female/Nonbinary Creator