Last Night in Soho Review: Anya Taylor-Joy, Thomasin McKenzie’s Psychological-Horror Film Tagged As ‘Half-Brilliant Thriller’ by Critics

Anya Taylor-Joy's Last Night in Soho released at the theatres in Venice on September 4 and it will release in USA on October 29, 2021. And, well the early reactions and reviews to the flick are out and they seem to have mixed reactions. The psychological-horror film has been called a 'half-brilliant thriller' by the critics. The film stars Thomasin McKenzie, Matt Smith, Diana Rigg, Rita Tushingham and Terence Stamp. The film marks the final and last appearances of Rigg and Margaret Nolan, who passed away back in September and October 2020. Last Night in Soho Trailer: Edgar Wright’s First Attempt at Horror Is Zany Enough; the Film Stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Thomasin McKenzie and Matt Smith (Watch Video).

Earlier on September 4, Last Night in Soho had its world premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival. The story of the film revolves around an aspiring fashion designer who mysteriously got a chance to enter the 1960s, where she encounters a dazzling jazz singer, but this time-travel comes with terrifying consequences. The Queen’s Gambit: Anya Taylor-Joy Feels the Netflix Show Has Changed Her Life Forever.

Check out some of the top reviews by the critics below:

The Guardian: The nostalgia gauge is code-red on Last Night in Soho, a gaudy time-travel romp that whisks its modern-day heroine to a bygone London that probably never existed outside our fevered cultural imagination. It’s the era of Dusty Springfield and Biba; great music, cool threads. British writer-director Edgar Wright takes a grab-bag of 1960s ingredients, paints them up and makes them dance to his tune. His film is thoroughly silly and stupidly enjoyable. To misquote William Faulkner, the past isn’t dead, it’s propping up the bar at the Café de Paris.

Time Magazine: Thomasin McKenzie’s character in Edgar Wright’s half-brilliant thriller Last Night in Soho—playing out of competition at the 78th Venice Film Festival—is the poster girl for it. McKenzie plays Ellie, an aspiring fashion designer and third-generation seamstress who takes pride in being able to make her own clothes, to create any vision of herself she pleases. This is something Wright shows us, rather than tells us, in the movie’s stunning opening scene: We see Ellie dancing down a hallway—the song is Peter and Gordon’s gorgeously wistful 1964 “A World Without Love”—and into her teenage bedroom, wearing a smashing early-1960s-style bouffant dress cleverly made from newspapers. Her room, and her LP collection, constitute a shrine to a past that’s not her own: CARNABY is spelled out in cartoonish letters on her bedroom door; she’s crazy about Cilla Black and the Kinks, music that was pouring out of transistor radios long before she was even a tadpole.

Deadline: Leave it to Edgar Wright to play with genre expectations and deliver yet another delightfully off-kilter thriller that also thrills with its undeniably trippy atmosphere and blast to the past of swinging 60’s London. The director of films like Baby Driver, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, The World’s End, and of course the cult classic Shaun Of The Dead has taken the seemingly glamorous and intriguing era of the 60s in Mod London circa ’65 and turned it into an increasingly menacing and dark period, but still fueled by a killer song selection that takes us from Cilla Black to Petula Clark. It is a mix that has you in its first half longing to go back to that period in time like protagonist Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) , but then maybe rethink that decision. Just like many of Wright’s twisty movies he doesn’t easily let the audience off the hook.

IndieWire: Edgar Wright’s long-awaited new film has plenty of what you might call The Wright Stuff. That is, it mixes comedy with more nerve-racking genres, it bursts with his love of pop culture, it explores his mixed feelings about the lure and the risk of nostalgia, and it includes several of his other favorite subjects, including London life and dodgy pubs. “Last Night In Soho” also marks a refreshing change for the director and co-writer of “Shaun of the Dead”, “Hot Fuzz”, and “Baby Driver.” Left behind is his trademark hyperactive editing and insistent post-modernism; in its place is flowing movement and intense emotion. It’s not just different from his previous films; it’s different from everyone else’s previous films. OK, you might mistake it for an extra-long episode of “Doctor Who” (it even features a former Doctor, Matt Smith), but “Last Night In Soho” is still an intoxicatingly distinctive, delirious creation that soars out of every pigeonhole you put it in.

The Hollywood Reporter: The movie opens on a giddy high with a winsome Thomasin McKenzie as Eloise Cooper, dancing exuberantly around her bedroom in present-day Cornwall to vocal duo Peter and Gordon’s 1964 hit, “A World Without Love,” while rocking a fabulous pleated newsprint gown of her own design. Orphaned as a child and raised by her grandmother, Eloise is obsessed with the ’60s; posters of Twiggy and of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s adorn her walls, and she treasures the family’s vintage vinyl collection. The soundtrack, which mainlines female artists like Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw and Petula Clark, along with the guys, is retro heaven, even if it favors chartbusters over deep cuts.

Anya Taylor-Joy had made his debut in Hollywood with the lead role of Thomasin in the horror film The Witch. The shady and  horrifying challenges that Anya Taylor faced in the film Last Night in Soho , will give you perfect feels of London in 1960s. With this, we all can suggest that to watch the movie if you are a lover of thriller genre.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 06, 2021 01:30 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).