Last Night in SoHo

[popcorn]

I love love love the old Wright films, didn't like Baby Driver that much and thought this was downright poor.

I just found it profoundly dull and simplistic. I saw every plot development coming, thought it had very little of the wit of script, directing or editing of past Wright films, tonally was all over the place...

Watched the whole film, I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE TWIST WAS.

Spoiler alert

Diana Rigg is Sandie. A twist so predictable - "You'll be an old lady before you get on that stage!" - I'm not surprised you didn't realise it was supposed to be a twist

[close]

[non capisco]

I found the stretch where she first starts hallucinating the sixties very beguiling and exciting. Then as soon as

Spoiler alert

her visions follow her out of the bedroom location and it turns into a poor man's Jacob's Ladder

[close]

I pretty much tuned out, it seemed to be

Spoiler alert

Matt Smith popping up out of nowhere and yelling "Oi! Cahm back 'errrrrre!"

[close]

over and over again ad nauseum. And the end twist felt like a load of bollocks that I can't quite make sense of.

Spoiler alert

Why'd Eloise see young Sandie get murdered if it didn't happen when all her other visions were apparently bang accurate? What order was Sandie supposed to have killed all these men in the sixties? Her pimp first and then a load of random johns or the other way round? Neither make sense.

[close]

I loved that half hour or so near the start so much I feel like I can't give this a complete slagging but it really does drop off after that.

I will say this though, never knew George Harrison's 'I Got My Mind Set On You' was a cover version.

[popcorn]

Spoiler alert

Why'd Eloise see young Sandie get murdered if it didn't happen when all her other visions were apparently bang accurate?

[close]

I wondered the same thing - I'd have to watch it again but I think

Spoiler alert

they slightly fudge it. You/Ellie probably don't actually see who is actually doing the stabbing, you just see a lot of blood and knife action and you/Ellie assume she's the one being stabbed.

I don't consider that a very elegant way of doing it, because you have to sort of just assume that's what happened (or watch it again to check I suppose?) rather than immediately understand. A good twist should be like "oh, I see" but this is just a bit confusing.

[close]

.

[popcorn]

The film is all about the evils of male fantasy and men forcing women into being things they don't want to be, but Ellie felt like a different sort of male fantasy to me - the fey, simpering teen dreamer who listens exclusively to 60s pop on vinyl. I just didn't buy her as a real person at all, she was a Belle and Sebastian cover model.

I found the entire first sequence, with her and her gran in the village, very naff, and plotwise I don't know why it needed to be there at all. Start in the taxi in London.

[non capisco]

They should had a scene where Cilla Black nicks someone's table at the club and refuses to move.

[checkoutgirl]

thought this was downright poor

I haven't read the thread or seen the film but the trailer looks a mess and didn't entice me at all. I think it started to go a bit wrong for Wright around World's End which I found disappointing. I haven't seen Baby Driver because euch. It's crazy to think that Hot Fuzz is 14 years ago now and other than the recent Sparks Brothers documentary I've disliked or ignored everything he's done since then.

He seemed to have so much potential but I don't know if it's him burning out or the realities of the modern film industry but he never seemed to reach that potential.

[joaquin closet]

I haven't read the thread or seen the film but

You are everything wrong with this country.

Agree that her first few sojourns into the 60s were great, but that everything around it was pretty poor. A lot of the dialogue was really rubbish... some of the stuff that her caricature CSM coursemates were coming out with was properly cringeworthy in its unbelievability. Edgar co-wrote this one with Krysty Wilson-Cairns, whose 1917 script was similarly clunker-laden; though in that case she probably wasn't helped in having her lines delivered by our lord and saviour Dean Charles Chapman.

Edgar knows how to move a camera, but not (for want of a better word) "poetically"... and I'm not convinced he knows how to light a scene evocatively (beyond COLOURS), or build tension, or emotional intrigue. The grunginess of Soho, while referenced, was never properly conveyed. Basically I'm not sure he's a "serious" filmmaker; but he may be the greatest comic filmmaker we have (when working with Pegg), so that's alright – if he ever gets back to that stuff...

To come back to the grunginess (or lack of) – 

Spoiler alert

the whole thing was nowhere near nasty enough. I liked the boy love interest character, but was ridiculously understanding, and surely should've turned on her at some point. And the ending... come on...

[close]

[up_the_hampipe]

So weird to see so many recognisable places in horror movie. Next time I'm eating doughballs at the Pizza Express on the corner of Dean St, it'll feel different.

I liked this movie more than I expected, although some of the dream sequences/flashbacks/hallucinations or whatever they were got a bit heavy-handed towards the end. I also can't take Matt Smith and his zeppelin head seriously in any role, especially when introduced as 'handsome stranger'.

[Waking Life]

I did enjoy it overall (I always have a soft spot for types of 'time travel') but it was pretty uneven. It felt like it could have done with a couple more drafts, despite it having been planned since the 00s. Apparently his original plan was to have the dream sections only soundtracked by music (rather than dialogue), which might have been interesting at the start but would have been less coherent. He was talked out of it by the Wilson-Cairns.

Some plot points were odd, like

Spoiler alert

Terence Stamp's character being essentially pointless - was he part of the corrupt vice squad? Is he just a leery old man now? Why the interest in Eloise? The section at the police station was also far fetched. The roommate and her other classmates were from a different film - from the 90s - and it struck me watching that Wright didn't know how to write young characters.

[close]

However, I did enjoy

Spoiler alert

the period setting, the tunes, and some of the psychological horror sequences, even if they went a tad too far with the faceless men.

[close]

Away to watch Our Friends In The North, which depicted a less glamourised (but presumably more realistic) Soho.

[Waking Life]

Also not sure

Spoiler alert

she would have gotten away with the scissor attack on her roommate, even with the extenuating circumstance of her landlady trying to do her a murder.

[close]

[checkoutgirl]

You are everything wrong with this country.

Which country?

[Mister Six]

I'm a bigger fan of Wright than many on here, and enjoyed (and defended) Baby Driver, but I thought this was pretty dismal, sadly.

The first act is great - it looks stunning, there are a bunch of great Wrighty shots and sequences (the dance with Matt Smith, everything involving the mirrors, the long pull back under the bedsheet). Thomasin McKenzie is brilliant, an absolutely incredible actress who deserves all the success in the world, and the rest of the cast (hey, it's Pauline McLynn!) are up to snuff. The soundtrack is lush, and Wright does a really solid job of establishing Elly - I very much felt her alternating trepidation, alienation and excitement at being in The Smoke.

But I get the feeling that Wright basically spent a long time obsessing over that first act and was never really sure how to turn it into an actual film, because as it gets into the second act it all starts to fall apart. The characters are flat and implausible. Jocasta being a shallow bitch I was fine with, because Mrs Six works in fashion and has told some horror stories about the deeply toxic people in that industry and the environment that enables them. But Puppy-Eyed Boyfriend was ridiculously accommodating towards this girl he'd met, what, a couple of weeks before and been on a date with once? Not saying he should have sacked her off, but I think even the kindest-hearted person would have probably had her sectioned after she nearly stabbed someone in the head with a pair of scissors. His auntie believes in ghosts? Why not have him believe in ghosts, and be desperate for some proof of the supernatural due to his own family tragedy? Because he, like everyone else, has no real inner life - he's just there to act out the plot, like a fairground puppet.

It gets less visually interesting the more it goes on, too. The transitions from present to past are less imaginative and elaborate, the mirror conceit gets played out, and things like peppering the police interview with clips that we saw all of 20 minutes ago suggest that Wright just couldn't think of a way to make these conversations visually interesting, which is a surprise and a shame. I guess the frenetic editing is supposed to be indicative of Elly's failing mental state, but maybe just doing that interview as one take, cold and static, so we can see her from the outside as her story falls dead from her lips in the face of police questioning - maybe that would have worked? And would have varied the pace of the film a little.

And then it all goes tits up at the end, as Wright and Wilson-Cairns seem to struggle to tie the past and present together. Somewhere in the second act, I began to wonder if Sandy (who I assumed was dead) was going to possess Elly, in an attempt to have a second chance at life. My stomach sank a bit at the thought of this, partly because I could see people complaining about it ripping off Get Out, and also because I didn't want a complete downbeat ending for poor Elly. But on reflection - no pun intended - I wish they had gone that route, because it would at least have tied things together a little more, and given some real stakes to the film prior to the last 15 minutes.

The thing is, when your story is "girl vs scary dreams", the only actual risk to Elly is to her reputation and standing in the real world - everyone in the class rejecting her even more than they already do, leaving her alienated and defeated, sending her back to her village to potentially recreate her mother's suicide. But her teacher was ridiculously supportive,[nb]Not the experience of Mrs Six and others I know who've studied fashion, although admittedly not in London.[/nb] Mr Puppy-Eyes obviously wasn't going anywhere, and she seemed to be able to freak out in class, turn up late to work, smash up her bedroom, run screaming through the streets, make mad-sounding police reports and generally act like someone having a massive psychotic break without any repercussions whatsoever. It didn't even seem to affect her at the end - everyone's supporting and applauding the girl who very nearly killed someone in their university library. And I don't think that's a comment on crap mental health provisioning in the UK.

So once you're into the second act, there's nowhere to go but repeat the same scene over and over again: Elly bumps into Matt Smith or the punter-zombies, runs around and screams her head off, comes back to Earth, apologises, bumps into Matt Smith or the punter-zombies... but with no actual threat to her life and no repercussions for her weird behaviour, it's just boring. Making the dreams an insidious attempt by Sandy to claim Elly's body at least creates a direct threat, and gives opportunities for the supporting cast to do more than sneer/look annoyed/say "are you OK?" What would Sandy do in Elly's place? What if Sandy turned out to be the person Elly wants to be, but can never bring herself to become? What if Sandy persuades Elly to really fuck Jocasta up?

It would also give some kind of character arc to Elly. What do we have now? She's a shy village girl who goes to the big city and struggles in an alien environment. Then she sees a girl get repeatedly raped and apparently murdered. Then she finds out what happened, runs away from some crap-looking ghosts and... becomes confident and a success at fashion? What? How does that tie into any of the seedy '60s Soho vibe? The fashion element seems completely unconnected to everything, too. Maybe parallels could be drawn with the showgirl/pimping side of things, what with fashion arguably capitalising on making women feel bad about themselves/their bodies/their roles in society, and dictating how they must behave to "get on" and be successful.

It would also give some context to that coda, which I couldn't decipher. She's seeing her mum in mirrors again now - is that good or bad? It seemed like a bad thing when it was happening in the village. And now she's seeing Sandy, too. Is that a good thing - like, "Yay! Sandy isn't in Hell and she's reconciled with Elly, and will be her secret friend!"? Or is it a bad thing - "Oh no, Elly is now chums with the murder-ghost, maybe she's going to turn evil"?

Partly that's the fault of this twist that they've forced in there, presumably to give some sense of resolution or purpose to the story. Except that it retroactively ruins the rest of the film. If Terence Stamp (wasted in this role!) is an ex-vice cop, why's he going around harassing 18-year-old girls? Why's he such a creepy cunt in that scene where she's interrogating him at the bar? Why not just reassure this exhausted, frightened, angry girl that he's not the baddie?

Is it because she reminds him of Sandy? But then - so what? He knows Sandy is still alive and got away with murder. Is he embittered about not being able to put her away? Was he conducting his own investigation, and thought she might be going to recreate Sandy's murder spree? No. There's no logic to it. He's weird and creepy and stalking Elly because the script needs to make you think he's Jack. He's evasive because if he wasn't, they wouldn't be able to have the landlady deliver the shock twist over his mangled corpse.

And Alexandria turning out to be Sandy might have been all right if they'd just fucking stuck to their guns: her tragedy made her a monster, and she needs to be taken down. But post-#MeToo, I suppose saying "This lass murdered all the blokes that had raped her, even after she killed her pimp, so she's a serial killer, which is fucked up and bad" is problematic.[nb]And makes me wonder whether I Spit on Your Grave could be repackaged as woke cinema in a year or two.[/nb] Not that I'm crying for the rapists or anything, but the film seems to want us to forget that she was quite happy to cold-bloodedly poison an innocent 18-year-old girl and stab her unwitting teenage friend to death in order to cover up her crimes. I can understand Elly wanting to save and forgive her, given what she's seen of Sandy's tragic life, but the film seems to be asking us to join her in that emotion, even as Puppy-Eyes bleeds out downstairs.

Oh, and it looks awful at the end, but maybe Covid messed up staffing at the render farms. Or they just spunked all the money away on the soundtrack.

It is a very good soundtrack.

[chveik]

how many bags of popcorn then?

[Mister Six]

Half a Malteser.

[Mister Six]

(Sorry for the very long post, everyone. I did like the first act, at least...)

[popcorn]

But Puppy-Eyed Boyfriend was ridiculously accommodating towards this girl he'd met, what, a couple of weeks before and been on a date with once? Not saying he should have sacked her off, but I think even the kindest-hearted person would have probably had her sectioned after she nearly stabbed someone in the head with a pair of scissors. His auntie believes in ghosts? Why not have him believe in ghosts, and be desperate for some proof of the supernatural due to his own family tragedy? Because he, like everyone else, has no real inner life - he's just there to act out the plot, like a fairground puppet.

I feel like, in the last 10 years, there have been an awful lot of incredibly boring Nice Friend characters like this in films. Characters you're supposed to find sweet and likeable but just feel like incredibly dull nonentities.

It would also give some context to that coda, which I couldn't decipher. She's seeing her mum in mirrors again now - is that good or bad? It seemed like a bad thing when it was happening in the village. And now she's seeing Sandy, too. Is that a good thing - like, "Yay! Sandy isn't in Hell and she's reconciled with Elly, and will be her secret friend!"? Or is it a bad thing - "Oh no, Elly is now chums with the murder-ghost, maybe she's going to turn evil"?

I thought this was especially odd because it flips from her mum in the mirror to Sandie. In the framing and editing, this appears to make them equivalent - for a second I thought this was some final sting in the tale, like it turned out Sandie was Elly's mum? But that clearly isn't the intent. It just feels clumsy.

[Mister Six]

Yeah, the possibility that Sandy was Ellie's mum had occurred to me earlier in the film, but obviously that wasn't it. Is she supposed to be throwing away her old life and embracing life in London? Is this supposed to be empowering or foreboding? Is if supposed to mean that she'll do what her mum and Sandy didn't, and get the glamorous, successful London life she'd always hoped for? I genuinely have no idea, because the film didn't seem to have anything much to say beyond "rape is bad and pimps are bad", which is true, but that's not really a theme.

[Waking Life]

I assumed the end vision of her was more a comment on her unstable mental health going forward. In the earlier exposition in the village, there was clearly a recognised concern that she had history of seeing visions of her mother, which she then lied about to her gran. With her mum's suicide, there was the implication that she had inherited her similar issues.

It isn't really carried on with the initial visions of Sandie though, as she establishes early that she has seen specific detail that meant the visions were supernatural. I thought the point at the end was now that Sandie had replaced her mother in her imagination, rather than it being a continuation of the story.

On the point of the men being rapists too, I had taken them to be paying johns (although maybe your point is that there isn't really a distinction) and assumed that was how Sandie had afforded to buy her house, given it was after Matt Smith had been offed. Their vision was therefore also meant as a plea for discovery, rather than just tormenting. That's on shaky ground though for the reasons you mentioned and so much of it comes down to the viewer to make massive assumptions. The fact that Sandie exists for another 55 years beyond the constrained time frame of the vision also means the reveal doesn't really stack up (the serial killings essentially occur after the main plot), in the same way as the logic of the Terence Stamp character.

The plot doesn't really hold up to scrutiny and not just because it's intended to be a psychological horror; it just feels more like a series of set pieces, like a short film idea expanded to feature length. I was reminded of Berberian Sound Studio at times (which was adapted from a short film and with similar Gialo influences), which worked better by being more abstract. Maybe Wright intended some elements to be abstract, but it's not really set out that way.

[Butchers Blind]

Don't worry, everyone's favourite MP has been to see it

https://twitter.com/jessphillips/status/1455307232426475525?t=hb6sKFJYuo3VKWCq7PO8QA&s=19

[olliebean]

Learning that one of my favourite films is in Jess Phillips' all time top 10 has shaken me a bit.

[Mister Six]

I assumed the end vision of her was more a comment on her unstable mental health going forward. In the earlier exposition in the village, there was clearly a recognised concern that she had history of seeing visions of her mother, which she then lied about to her gran. With her mum's suicide, there was the implication that she had inherited her similar issues.

But surely the point of the film is that neither her nor her mum (or at least not Elly) actually have mental health issues, it's just that they're both psychic, or mediums, or whatever? Seeing her dead mum would be a sign of mental distress if she hadn't spent the next few weeks solving a mystery involving about 30 ghosts that only she could see.[nb]Well, and Diana Rigg at the very end, I think? But she's the killer and walked into the haunted room, so I don't think that's necessarily common.[/nb]

On the point of the men being rapists too, I had taken them to be paying johns (although maybe your point is that there isn't really a distinction)

Pretty much. She's very obviously not enthusiastically consenting when Jack is pimping her out, but they don't notice or care. It's basically rape, regardless of whether they leave money on the bedside table afterwards.

The fact that Sandie exists for another 55 years beyond the constrained time frame of the vision also means the reveal doesn't really stack up (the serial killings essentially occur after the main plot)

I don't think that but doesn't stack up. She's killing them in revenge for years(?) of them exploiting and abusing her. She's basically a serial killer, albeit one with a sympathetic backstory.

I agree about it being a series of setpieces. I can't remember if I wrote it in that long spiel up there, but I think Wright had a clear vision for the opening act, but then no real idea of how to wrangle that into a satisfying story with proper characters and character development. So all you end up with is a string of spooky scenes and necessary story moments without the narrative, thematic or character tissue to make it a cohesive whole.

[popcorn]

I agree that the whole layer about her dead mum and hints at mental illness or psychic powers are an irrelevant distraction. They don't tie into any bigger theme or metaphor and only confuse the metaphysics of the world. She only needed to be haunted by ghosts, that's it.

As I said earlier, I think the film could have begun with her arriving in London.

The final act also reminded me of Perfect Blue, btw, a far superior film with a superior take on similar themes.

[Mister Six]

I think they were intended to serve a purpose: setting the stakes for what Elly could lose. Best case scenario, she goes back to the village, considers herself a failure and is unhappy. Worst case scenario, she kills herself too - or goes mad and is sectioned.

But they were rendered irrelevant by the script, which ensured that Elly never actually faced any consequences for apparently undergoing a prolonged mental breakdown. The university should have intervened when she started freaking out in class. Doctors should have been called when she gave that report to the police. And she should have been arrested after she almost buried a pair of scissors in a girl's brain. But at the end she's a success, surrounded by supportive peers and friends. Not saying it should have been a total downer, but the end result is that the threat of failure/suicide/sectioning is obviously never going to eventuate, so the backstory is irrelevant, even though it was supposed to mean something.

And yeah, Perfect Blue is amazing.

[Waking Life]

But surely the point of the film is that neither her nor her mum (or at least not Elly) actually have mental health issues, it's just that they're both psychic, or mediums, or whatever? Seeing her dead mum would be a sign of mental distress if she hadn't spent the next few weeks solving a mystery involving about 30 ghosts that only she could see.[nb]Well, and Diana Rigg at the very end, I think? But she's the killer and walked into the haunted room, so I don't think that's necessarily common.[/nb]

Pretty much. She's very obviously not enthusiastically consenting when Jack is pimping her out, but they don't notice or care. It's basically rape, regardless of whether they leave money on the bedside table afterwards.

I don't think that but doesn't stack up. She's killing them in revenge for years(?) of them exploiting and abusing her. She's basically a serial killer, albeit one with a sympathetic backstory.

I agree about it being a series of setpieces. I can't remember if I wrote it in that long spiel up there, but I think Wright had a clear vision for the opening act, but then no real idea of how to wrangle that into a satisfying story with proper characters and character development. So all you end up with is a string of spooky scenes and necessary story moments without the narrative, thematic or character tissue to make it a cohesive whole.

On the mental health point, I'm not sure it can be cleanly separated from the psychic / time travel / ghostly visions (as per her near breakdown), especially when coupled with the ambiguity of the ending. Whether past visions of her mum were genuinely psychic or just hallucinations, it's implied that there has been a negative mental impact for Elly. It's also unclear if her mum had the same thing, but we do know the eventual outcome was suicide. My point on the ending is that it implies her visions are likely to continue, rather than this episode neatly exorcising it. Whether that last vision is supernatural or psychological is - I think - deliberately ambiguous.

The reason I didn't think the serial killer point stacked up because it almost feels like an afterthought, presented as exposition outside the main plot. Her abuse does partly seed a need for revenge (although comes quite late on in the film) but it was still quite a jump from the way they'd developed her character. Alongside pushing credibility that she continued to take men back (presumably unassisted during a pretty dangerous period in Soho), killed 100 or so, buried them in her floorboards without detection (while in the crosshairs of the vice squad), and then settled down as a landlady (all after the events of the film). I get the film is supernatural so suspension of disbelief etc, but I just struggled to make the leap for it to be a satisfying conclusion.

[Zetetic]

(Sorry for the very long post, everyone. I did like the first act, at least...)

Was glad of the review, and grateful that you wrote it.

[Mister Six]

Aw, thanks! Sometimes I look at those walls of text I write and think, "hm, really?" But I suppose I like reading other people's walls of text, so...

On the mental health point, I'm not sure it can be cleanly separated from the psychic / time travel / ghostly visions (as per her near breakdown), especially when coupled with the ambiguity of the ending. Whether past visions of her mum were genuinely psychic or just hallucinations, it's implied that there has been a negative mental impact for Elly. It's also unclear if her mum had the same thing, but we do know the eventual outcome was suicide. My point on the ending is that it implies her visions are likely to continue, rather than this episode neatly exorcising it. Whether that last vision is supernatural or psychological is - I think - deliberately ambiguous.

Maybe, but I think I'll have to chalk that up to Wright not really having much to say and not even knowing how to say it. If the psychological ambiguity was supposed to be a part of the film, I didn't pick up on that at all; it seemed like a straightforwardly supernatural movie and that's how I took it. What's the first indication that she's not going completely mad? Spotting the Rialto "R" when she comes out of the vintage shop?

Fair enough on the serial killer thing.

[Waking Life]

Aw, thanks! Sometimes I look at those walls of text I write and think, "hm, really?" But I suppose I like reading other people's walls of text, so...

Maybe, but I think I'll have to chalk that up to Wright not really having much to say and not even knowing how to say it. If the psychological ambiguity was supposed to be a part of the film, I didn't pick up on that at all; it seemed like a straightforwardly supernatural movie and that's how I took it. What's the first indication that she's not going completely mad? Spotting the Rialto "R" when she comes out of the vintage shop?

Fair enough on the serial killer thing.

I enjoyed the analysis too, which is what prompted me to give it more thought.

I think you're right on the Wright thing, which chimes with my main criticism. I do think it was supernatural for at least the middle section (and the R was definitely the penny dropping for her, although arguably she could have subconsciously seen it at an earlier point), but it was actually the ending where I thought Wright was trying to blur things a bit. The section in the village wasn't really developed enough to give much indication to be honest. Perhaps I just need to watch it again if it was relatively clear cut.

I probably wasn't clear in my original post though, as my main point was actually meant to be on the impact of the vision at the end on Elly, rather than suggesting the whole film was all in her head. We think she's escaped, but her torment continues (supernatural or otherwise). Like many horrors films before.

[Mister Six]

I dunno if it's torment though. Seeing her mum all the time is worrying because her mum is dead, so the assumption is that she's mentally unstable and having hallucinations. But the events of the film show that there is an afterlife and that she is capable of seeing both the past and spirits (although the two, presumably, are linked). So I guess maybe the coda is supposed to show her happily accepting that she's A-OK. Except that her mother's image has been supplanted in the mirror by Sandy. So... it's bad?

It's just impossible to tell, because the film doesn't establish enough about any of the characters or their situations for a conclusion to be drawn about what journey Elly has just been on.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I really enjoyed this, perhaps I was in the right mood for it, but I thought it looked stunning, had a great soundtrack, and the performances were all superb too. Someone I know described it as a sort of 18 rated Doctor Who episode (and not because of Matt Smith's presence, I should stress) that was what it felt like to me, a really impressive ghost story with a strong central message about how certain men have treated women over the years.

Spoiler alert

I did think it was a bit of a shame it ended in a more traditional slasher flick kind of way, and I'm not sure the scene after Elouise being taken away in the ambulance was needed

[close]

, but I still liked it a lot overall. 8.2/10

[Exposition]

I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I'm not surprised by the sort of muted response to it. It's not one of Wright's best films - though visually I think it might be.