Why I Love Last Night in Soho
It’s been a year since I first went to see Last Night in Soho on Halloween here in the UK and left the theater leaving so enamored with the film. It felt so refreshing to see a female-led thriller that dealt with femininity in a way that was unique and made me feel really seen as someone who’s obsessed with mid-century glamour, music, and movies. I was completely obsessed with the 60s aesthetic of the film, which ironically is in direct opposition to the film’s message: let’s not lust after the past. Still, I feel like this movie hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, so in honor of Halloween, I thought I’d share my thoughts on it with and generally, use this platform to fan-girl over a movie I genuinely love.
Last Night in Soho is written by Krysty Wilson-Cairns and directed by Edgar Wright. The story was a collaborative venture on behalf of both Krysty and Edgar. When Eloise (played by Thomasin McKenzie), an aspiring fashion designer moves to Soho where she is mysteriously able to enter the 60s and encounters the life of a glamorous singer (played by Anya- Taylor Joy), whom she becomes enamored with until visions of her life become twisted and dark.
I’ve pretty much recommended this film to everyone I know and I was surprised that a lot of people hadn’t heard of it, even though it's been out for over a year. And I’m still surprised by the reviews that have called it “hollow” and “lackluster.” Although every film is bound to have its flaws and Last Night in Soho is no exception, I would hardly say it lacked substance.
Any film that follows a female protagonist and has thematic elements that center around feminism, is likely to be held under a microscope. And it makes sense! At the end of the day, women have seen too many stereotypically sexist female characters in cinema and television for years and years. Of course, we’re bound to over-analyze and dissect stories that claim to be told from our perspective. Not to mention, it took this long to get to the point where we do see more women on-screen as main characters and not just as “love interests”. With that said, I think some people expected Last Night in Soho to be a million things at once and as a result, underappreciated what the movie does so well. So here’s what I loved about Last Night in Soho:
***Now approaching Spoilers City! Turn back now or proceed with caution!***
The Harsh Reality of Moving to the Big City
I found that there was something uniquely powerful about how the film portrayed the romanticization of moving to “the big city” as a young woman juxtaposed with the realities of living in a city as a woman. In most movies, moving to London or New York City is akin to discovering Oz, but they rarely depict the main protagonist having to hold her keys between her knuckles as she walks home at night. Last Night in Soho paints an aesthetically pleasing picture of London in the swinging 60s, an era Eloise has long admired as this empowering, romantic time, similar to the way she’s romanticized London. But as the movie becomes darker, the mist is lifted and Eloise is able to see London for what it is: a big beautiful city, inhabited by all walks of life, including predatorial men.
Even though her grandmother warns her to stay vigilant at the beginning of the film, she’s so excited about her big move that she isn’t really concerned. But as soon as she gets to London she encounters a creepy male taxi driver who makes comments about her “long legs” and how she “looks like a model” stealing glances from her in the rearview mirror. She asks to stop at the Pharmacy, to avoid hearing more of his pervy remarks and so he doesn’t know where she lives. He then proceeds to wait for her, forcing Eloise to stay inside until he’s gone.
In just this scene alone it’s clear that the young woman who’s been blinded by her childlike dreams of what this romantic city would be like learns the harsh reality of what it’s really like. It’s such a specific epiphany for a young woman to have and a significant one to show on the big screen. Especially given the violence women are likely to experience in London.
At the end of the movie, Eloise comes to the conclusion that “London is a bad place,” which might seem like a crazy statement out of context, maybe, especially to viewers who’ve never had to walk home clutching their keys between their fingers. But to me, it had a swift impact. Despite the glamorous, beautiful parts of London the viewer sees, the city still has a seedy, dark underbelly. In this beautiful city, Sandie (Anya-Taylor Joy) isn’t safe, nor is Eloise. And that’s exactly the harsh reality of existing as a woman: Even in fabulous Soho, we have to walk home clutching our keys, just in case.
Horror Through the Female Gaze
The horror genre is expanding to become more inclusive to people of marginalized genders. And there have been brilliant female-led horrors in recent years, Hush, Midsommar, Us, The Invisible Man, and Hereditary, to name a few. But even of those titles, Hush is the only one to have been co-written by a woman, whereas the others are written entirely by men.
I do think it makes a difference if a woman is involved in writing a female-led horror. I can tell, pretty much 90% of the time. The taxi driver scene in Last Night in Soho, to me, was a dead giveaway that a woman was heavily involved behind the camera. These heightened “almost” situations are so universally understood by women. All of us have had moments of feeling watched, followed, stared down, etc., that have unsettled us. We’ve all had moments that we recount to our male friends/family who often tell us we’re “overthinking” or that “nothing happened,” but it’s the questions that pop into our heads, the “what if I didn’t get out of that taxi” or “what if I didn’t walk back to the main road” that linger and scare us. Horror stories that quite frankly, a man wouldn’t begin to know how to write. (I didn’t mean for that to sound like such a sick burn, but it’s just the truth, you dudes can walk anywhere at any time of day without even thinking about it).
LNIS would’ve been a totally different movie without Krysty Wilson-Cairns, who also co-wrote the 2019 Oscar-winning film, 1917 (A.K.A. truly the only war movie I’ve actually liked, which is high praise). In fact, in the early stages of the movie, it was Cairns who showed Edgar Wright around the “dingy parts of Soho” and initially met for a drink and the bar across the street from the strip club she used to live above and the bar she used to work at. It was her involvement that not only gave authenticity to Eloise’s experiences in modern-day London and nostalgia for London in the Sixties (her mom was obsessed with the 60s) but made for a multi-dimensional female villain.
In a Zoom interview with Indie Wire, Wilson-Cairns said, “I had never seen a villain like that before. I’d never seen a villain where I don’t agree with what she does, but I empathize with what she does. That was such a crucial element that hooked me in. I think without that twist, I might not have been as interested in the film.”
It’s this twist that sets LNIS apart from other female-led horrors. The women in this film are never victims, they’re active participants in their story. And by the time we learn what Sandie has done to all the men who used her, we understand why and as a result empathize with her.
The Dangers of Nostalgia
As I mentioned, I was sucked into the 60s-era aesthetics. Everything from the clothing, to the hair, to the dancing, to the music, I am truly obsessed with the aesthetics of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, like a lot of us pinterest/ mood-board gal-ies. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t listen to Dean Martin, Patsy Cline, and Frank Sinatra on my way to class in the mornings as I pretend I’m in a movie starring lil ole me. So I absolutely loved the dreamy 60s set pieces in Last Night in Soho. The film made it all too easy to get swept up in that era, on purpose of couse, but damn did they get me. But just as quickly the rug is pulled out from under us as viewers and we see the darkness that lurks beneath the glamour.
This all came from Wilson-Cairn’s own experience in having a 60s-obsessed mother and having a lot of admiration for this era when women were starting to gain equality, access to birth control, etc. When she was researching in the early development stages, Wilson- Cairn’s started to read more about the era, and the reality of the 60s, that women couldn’t own their own property or credit cards.
In the previously mentioned Indie Wire Zoom interview, she said, “I feel nostalgia all the time, and I actually think it’s a really dangerous thing,” she said. “We’re always told about the good old days, and then when you actually investigate, when you use your brain and you look at the ‘good old days,’ you’re like, ‘Wow, okay, we had problems.'”
I know I’m not the only one who shops at vintage stores, hunting for retro clothing, just as Eloise tries to hunt down the same white jacket she sees Sandie wear in her dream. (Which I admittedly thought to myself, I want that jacket!). It seems young women now more than ever are romanticizing the past, whether it’s on Spotify, Instagram, TikTok, or Pinterest. Like I said, I should know, because I’m one of them. And it’s so easy to do! But it’s important to recognize that had we really lived back then, it probably would’ve really sucked. And no amount of clothing or swanky music would make us want to stay there permeanently. It’s not a bad thing to indulge in a little nostalgia now and again, but getting too wrapped up in it stops us from thinking about the realities of the sexism and racism that was openly acceptable back then… but the clothes, oh the clothes. Just kidding. It is funny though, because I’m a sensible gal and even after reading that interview with Wilson-Cairns, I can’t help but fantasize about twirling around a fitted 60s style kitchen in my shift dress and go go boots to Dean Martin… wow she’s good.
Romance Through the Female Gaze
A short note on this: I loved Eloise and John’s relationship. John was everything a romantic lead should be: supportive, kind, and thoughtful. I loved the scenes he was in and the running gag that he had a long commute from South London. I will say, I wish we got to know him a bit better, but there’s only so much time in a film and this is very much Eloise’s story.
Although, it was interesting that John’s main narrative purpose was to help Eloise on her mission to discover who Sandie was and what happened to her. I do wonder if this was intentional, given the way female love interests are often written into the story to aid the male hero on his journey, or if this was merely a symptom of only having so much time to tell a big, complex story. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping it was the former rather than the latter, because, to be candid, it’s nice for the roles to be reversed. Nonetheless, he’s a great addition to the film.
The Exploration of the Exploitation of Women
Another thing I loved about this movie, was Sandie as an antagonist. When we first meet her, she’s this mesmerizing, beautiful young woman who walks around like she owns Soho, but as the story progresses we see her fade into this exploited person who merely drifts through every day. She quickly learns that what she thought was her shot at stardom, was anything but.
Anya-Taylor Joy was captivating as Sandie. No one else could play this glamorous 60s singer turned murderous villain.
In a lot of ways, Anya-Taylor Joy as Sandie, reminded me a lot of Megan Fox as Jennifer in Jennifer’s Body. But instead of eating boys, she’s killing all the men who used her, including the man who claimed he’d make her a star. While Jennifer resembles how women are sexually exploited in the present day (much like how Megan Fox has been sexually exploited in her real-life career), Sandie is a personification of all the women who were exploited in the past and glamorized to this day.
She resembles the trapped in an era where women were less likely to be believed when they were abused. Sandie’s character really forces the viewer to think about the women who wear those vintage outfits that we lust after in old LIFE magazines. Not only does Last Night in Soho force us to look beyond the glitz and glam we tend to associate with the 60s and really feel the sexism of the era, but it draws meaningful parallels between the way women were treated in the past and how we’re treated now, in 2022 as a result.
Final Thoughts
Last Night in Soho is a visually stunning exploration of the exploitation of women, the dangers of nostalgia, and the scary realities of living in a big city as a woman. It’s not a perfect film. No film is. You might even say that LNIS is guilty of the “final girl” trope, (A.K.A. The final girl is a trope in horror films (particularly slasher films). It refers to the last girl(s) or woman alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story). Although it doesn’t fit into the slasher genre, Eloise is a white woman who for the most part, is portrayed as a “pure” young white woman. And maybe this wasn’t even intentional. These sorts of tropes are so deeply rooted in popular culture, that it takes a lot to recognize when we’re guilty of portraying them. Regardless, I wholeheartedly believe this movie had good intentions and I would love for Last Night in Soho to be the first of many female/female-identifying led horror and thriller movies that feature strong, multi-dimensional protagonists. And I think it will be. This movie has remained one of my favorites I’ve seen in theaters. Boy does it deliver.
If you haven’t seen it already, please! Watch! I beg of you.
You can stream Last Night in Soho on HBO Max in the States. You can also stream it on NOW TV in the UK and it’s available to rent on Amazon (And worth every penny).
