Last Night in Soho: Neon NZ Film Review

Cast: Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Diana Rigg, Terence Stamp

Director: Edgar Wright

Edgar Wright's latest really boils down to a mesh of a time-travelling horror film that deals with the PTSD of toxic masculinity.

McKenzie plays Eloise Turner, a Cornish-dwelling wannabe fashionista whose room is bedecked in 60s aesthetics from music to the style of the times. When her dream of studying to become a designer in London comes true, she heads to the capital's Soho.

However, Eloise finds when she arrives that life is not as she expected, and she's troubled by her own demons, and the demons of another's past, those of would-be singer Sandy (The Queen's Gambit's Anya Taylor-Joy)....

Director Edgar Wright has asked for some secrecies around the events after Eloise heads to London, so to respect that makes a review of his latest tricky, but not impossible.

At its heart, this coming-of-age tale is mixed with Wright's trademark editing sensibilities (albeit toned down a little for pacing) and some bravura visual flair. Camera trickery, mirrors, and possibly editing tricks all combine to mesh something that befits the psychological back and forths of the film itself.

It may be a critique of 60s London and men ruling the world thrown through a prism of 21st century activism, but Last Night in Soho's got its roots firmly in the horror movies of the times (and occasionally Sapphire and Steel) - even down to the ludicrously OTT conclusion that almost threatens to bring everything crashing down that's been built up before.

In among all the wondrous costuming that's accurate to a period detail and the carefully curated soundtrack and evocative imagery is a wonderful Thomasin McKenzie.Here McKenzie builds on her growing screen appeal and strengths to imbue Eloise with both a maddening descent into mental mayhem and a feminist fortitude to fight back. She's mesmerising throughout, shifting from wide-eyed wonder to ill-at-ease discomfort - a perfect performance from an actress clearly on the rise.

Taylor-Joy may have been the initial drawcard to the film, but she's sidelined in favour of McKenzie's journey - a player admittedly in proceedings, but one whose allure is rooted in the 1960s London scene and whose journey is horrific to unfold. There are subsidiary characters though that feel underwritten and inserted into proceedings for necessity rather than narrative - and at times during its 2 hour run time, you almost get a sense of wishing that Wright had either fleshed out some of them more, or played down some of their weaker edges.

Wright's film may be about the dangers of romanticising an era via the nostalgic haze of the past and is one which becomes about the monsters of the personal world. It leans into genre conventions, and unlike Wright's previous work, doesn't really subvert them, but uses them more as building blocks to create - for the large part - an evocative, terrifying and riveting piece of occasionally flawed film.