More Favourite Horror Movies: Last Night in Soho

Last Night in Soho

Dir: Edgar Wright. Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Thomasin McKenzie, Matt Smith, Diana Rigg, Terence Stamp, Michael Ajao, Rita Tushingham. 2021.

Ellie Turner (Thomasin McKenzie) sees ghosts. Specifically, she sometimes has visions of her mother, dead by suicide. This doesn’t seem troubling to Ellie, in fact, it seems to be reassuring for her. Ellie wants nothing more than to experience whatever remains of Swinging Sixties Soho, a time and place that holds special significance to the women in her family. Accepted at the London College of Fashion, Ellie leaves both Cornwall and her grandmother behind, and travels to Soho where she begins to have visions that take her back to the 1960s and to the promising yet troubling and ultimately tragic life of a young singer named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy).

Last Night in Soho is a flawed movie, most noticeably in the sometimes illogical behaviour of its characters. I’m not going to argue that this adds to the dreamlike quality of the movie — it doesn’t — but I am going to state that these flaws didn't detract from what Last Night in Soho offered me, which is an experience, and a completely cinematic one at that. 

Director Edgar Wright, assisted by co-writer Kristy Wilson-Cairns and each and every one of his behind the scenes creative departments, has worked to create a decidedly appealing Soho of the 1960’s. Its colours, wardrobe, locales, soundtrack and actors inhabit a thoroughly alluring world. It’s this enticing place filled with the music of Peter and Gordon, Egyptian eyeliner and plastic raincoats that, like its twinned main characters have been, lures us in. It’s only when nightmarish reality starts to bleed into this innocent and promising world with its Argento-like colours that we understand the truth behind the glamour, and it’s here that Soho truly becomes a ghost story. 

After my initial viewing of Last Night in Soho, I left the theatre feeling fully satisfied. I’d had my thrills and my senses had been completely engaged. It was only afterward that I began to really think about the dangers of nostalgia that Soho asks us to ponder, as well as the notion of just what makes a victim, and what constitutes fitting punishment. Lofty take aways from a movie that too many have criticized for its lack of substance.

More Favourite Horror Movies, Alphabetically: The Witch

The Witch

Dir: Robert Eggers. Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw. 2015.

”Wouldst thou like the taste of butter… wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”

If you haven’t seen The Witch, please don’t read what follows, as it’s spoiler laden. 

The Witch is a movie that divides audiences. The major complaint its detractors seems to have against it is that ‘it’s not scary’. Whatever that means. 

When I hear that complaint, my first thought is, “I wonder how they watched this movie? Did they watch it on a computer monitor or some little screen? Were they absent of distractions? Did they have excessive expectations of what they were about to see?”

Regardless of the answer to the above, I honestly believe that The Witch is a movie best seen in the theatre where the image and sound overtake you, where the experience is bigger than anything else around you. Regardless, I get that The Witch isn’t a movie to everyone's tastes. No movie is. 

From my perspective, The Witch illustrates how a belief system forces someone to become what its adherents believe her to be. I can relate to that, and the notion, to me, is scary.

The Witch is, first, a horror movie that is propelled by a sense of isolation and fate, heading, with moments of false hope, towards its seemingly predestined conclusion. Though this was director Robert Eggers first feature film, he has such a command of what he’s doing that it’s hard to believe.

It is also a film with extraordinary performances, unnerving music by Mark Korven, and intense attention to detail. Its dialogue is written and spoken in Olde English, and its language is as dense as the forest that surrounds the farm of the outcast family, and hides not just one witch, but perhaps a coven. In that regard, the dialogue can sometimes be difficult to discern, but that rarely detracts for long.   

And Poor Thomasin; she gets it from all sides. As the family begins to lose, first, hope and then their grip on reality, we fear for what is in store for her. Whether her ending is a release or a role she’s forced to take on is open for interpretation.