Last Night in Soho

[Peekaboo]

No love for this?

I really enjoyed it although it was pretty much a bigger-budget, scarier, more adult Doctor Who episode, really (it even features DOCTOR WHO himself in it!).

Like many Doctor Who episodes, it doesn't bear much PLOT SCRUTINY but I really liked how it lures you into this soft nostalgia before PULLING THE RUG in the last third. I kept thinking "why is this film rated R?" for 75% of it until you go OH OKAY THAT'S WHY

Works as a cautionary tale and a FEMALE ISSUES film without laying it too thick, which I appreciated. The only real flat note for me was the WIDE-EYED SUPPORTIVE BOYFRIEND which was UTTERLY UNBELIEVABLE and that's saying something in a film about TIME-TRAVELLING by PULLING YOUR BEDSHEETS OVER YOUR FACE.

Nice to see so many parts of Central London used as locations too, particularly so many I have MEMORIES attached to.

 

[rhythmbandit]

I loved it. Visually great and wasnt expecting an appearance from Arr Cilla.

Loved how batshit crazy Diana Rigg was, you can tell she had great fun filming.

 

[Phoenix]

I didn’t care for this, it’s not bad but it’s very flimsy and the fact that he’s apparently paying homage to Don’t Look Now and Repulsion is a bit silly since there’s no tension just frustration in this movie.

The visuals are great especially the mirror scenes but from the start the lead is so fucking dumb it annoyed me. It’s 2021, she has a smart phone, she can’t be this useless. And then the love interest comes in and he’s even more flat.

Great turn from Diana Rigg in the last part.

 

[foopy]

Well this was quite something

Top marks for needledropping Urr Cilla belting out 'You're My World' while a timeshifting Dame Diana Rigg crawls up a hallucinogenic staircase brandishing a cake knife in pursuit of our heroine while her love interest expires in a pool of blood and the whole gaff catches on fire

I thought I was going to expire from giggling

 

[gggggg]

What a disappointment this was. Gently enjoyable in the first half, but falling off a cliff into unmitigated disaster territory in the second.

I know Edgar Wright wears his influences on his sleeve, but this is just a sanitised patische of 60s Polanski and 70s Argento. It’s about as scary or shocking as your average Doctor Who episode. EDIT: i see this was mentioned in the original post

I think Wright is a very successful surface level director, with talent in visual story telling. It’s telling that the first time he attempts a project with an inch of subtext, it falls flat on its face.

Side note: I can’t stop thinking about how much of a better film it would be if

Spoiler

those scissors had gone into Jocasta’s head

 

[Christian]

This was a misfire for me too. I enjoyed the first half quite a bit as the insipid heroine was balanced out by all the fun secondary characters led by Anya Taylor Joy and the wicked roommate. The descent into limp CGI horror for the final act lost me completely, in the same way that the writers seemed to completely lose all track of what made it interesting. It was fun seeing Soho on screen (a very loose definition of Soho but whatever) but it didn't have much sense of place. If Argento and Polanski were the goal, this missed the mark completely.

Top marks to the soundtrack of hoary classics and stuff I hadn't heard before, and the shots of empty Soho streets in the closing credits which were the most atmospheric thing about it.