Last Night in Soho review – Edgar Wright’s horror homage is no fun

In their 2007 DVD commentary for Edgar Wright's own Hot Fuzz, Wright and Quentin Tarantino offer a telling glimpse into the philosophies of two of the world’s most successful genre filmmakers. In between jibes and veiled attempts to one-up each other – the whole thing plays like a podcast – the pair come to a shared view of what makes a good homage. Woody Allen’s use of iconic British actors for bit parts and cameos in Match Point, for example, is considered as something not to do.

To be fair to Wright, he doesn't make make the same mistake in Last Night in Soho, his latest stab at genre filmmaking. Young talent is the primary focus and, where the likes of Diana Rigg and Terrence Stamp do pop up, they’re used well. The late, great Rigg (to whom the film is dedicated) is, in fact, the film's highlight as eerie landlady Miss Collins, while Stamp puts in a memorable turn as a shadowy figure whose character name is quite literally “Silver-Haired Gentleman.”

Still, they are mere background noise in the new London life of fashion student Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), a wannabe Vivienne Westwood who also wishes to have been born during her heyday. Leaving behind an idyllic existence with her grandmother in Cornwall, Eloise must confront the big city – and her own internal demons (Anya Taylor-Joy and Matt Smith also feature in more roundabout roles, for which the less said the better).

Going by most of Wright and Tarantino's criteria for how to make a genre film without lapsing into derivativeness, though, Last Night in Soho is a failure. As much an outright copy of 70s British horror as opening Peter and Gordon song “A World Without Love” rips off Simon & Garfunkel, Last Night in Soho is a misguided attempt to bring fresh thinking to an old formula. Though it tries to be the stuff of nightmares, Wright’s film ultimately proves the sort of bad dream better worth forgetting.

There’s one real reason for this. Wright’s passion for the genre, as evidenced by years of tweeting and an almost two-decade filmography, is qualified by a sincerity he’s much better off without. Though imperfect, heist flick Baby Driver gained from the winking irreverence to getaway driver-core which is all but absent here. A string of late 60s and early 70s pop-rock songs follow one after another without ever really fitting what's on-screen. Petula Clark’s “Downtown” is a case in point, used repeatedly to sometimes-gripping effect. But the whole thing is uncomfortably po-faced and deferent. You just wish he’d used Allan Sherman’s parody instead.

It doesn't help that Last Night in Soho is by some way Wright’s least funny film. Rare jokes tend to fall flat and the overly serious tone adds an uncomfortable claustrophobia – intended, perhaps, but contributing no fun. Co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns (1917) comes from a dramatic background and it shows. The authenticity she adds to the gendered anxieties of fresher Eloise isn’t quite understood by Wright – or at least isn’t harnessed with his usual confidence.

Yet when Soho leans into the direct horror path, it flies. A house of horror-esque sequence is comfortably the best scene in the film. In stark contrast, Eloise’s experiences as a shy first-year student, surrounded by a cabal of caricatures from Bully Roommate to Loyal Love Interest, ultimately wind up feeling hollow. After years of promising a Nicholas Roeg-inspired horror film, Wright has certainly delivered just that. Sadly, it's something of an empty homage.

Last Night in Soho was screened as part of the Venice Film Festival 2021. It will be released in UK cinemas on 29 October.