Warning: This article contains spoilers for Last Night in Soho.
Edgar Wright has stepped out of his comfort zone for his latest movie, Last Night in Soho. Starring Thomasin McKenzie as a fashion student in London who gets whisked back to a decidedly unglamorous Swinging Sixties, Last Night in Soho is a straightforward psychological horror movie with none of Wright’s usual one-liners, sight gags, or parodic overtones.
But, while it’s certainly a creative departure for the director, it’s still an Edgar Wright movie. It has all the visual flourishes and stylistic trademarks that his fans have come to expect.
Homage
While Last Night in Soho isn’t as overt with its homaging as the genre-riffing Cornetto movies, it does feature plenty of nods to existing cinematic classics. The scenes of ghostly hands reaching out of the walls to grab Ellie have direct parallels with Repulsion. Early in the movie, she visits the same newsagents from Peeping Tom.
When Ellie travels back to 1965, Wright includes posters advertising contemporary gems like Darling, Thunderball, and Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors. Her first encounter with Sandie in the nightclub mirror is reminiscent of the iconic mirror scene from the Marx Brothers comedy Duck Soup with Harpo pretending to be Groucho’s reflections. Even when Wright isn’t helming an homage-driven movie, he still includes plenty of homages.
Soundtrack Full Of Needle-Drops
Like Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and Wes Anderson, Wright is renowned for the needle-drop soundtrack moments in his movies. Shaun of the Dead has the “Don’t Stop Me Now” sequence, Scott Pilgrim has Brie Larson’s rendition of “Black Sheep,” and Baby Driver is a jukebox musical syncing car chases to an iPod playlist.
Wright uses Ellie’s favorite ‘60s-era records to immerse audiences in the historical setting of Last Night in Soho. With classics like Peter & Gordon’s “A World Without Love” and the Kinks’ “Starstruck,” Wright has delivered yet another dynamite soundtrack.
Breakneck Pacing
While Last Night in Soho is slightly slower and more cerebral than the zombie-infested terror of Shaun of the Dead or the action-heavy antics of Hot Fuzz, it still has the breakneck pacing that Wright’s fans expect.
Wright’s Last Night in Soho script – co-written with 1917’s Krysty Wilson-Cairns – never lingers on a scene for too long as it keeps the story moving forward.
Pubs
Going back to the Winchester in Shaun of the Dead, pubs have featured heavily in Wright’s filmography. Hot Fuzz has a shootout in a pub and The World’s End is about a pub crawl.
In Last Night in Soho, Wright continues this tradition as Ellie gets a job in the basement bar of her local pub – a real pub in Soho called The Toucan – to pay the rent at her new bedsit.
Montage
Thanks to his signature kinetic editing style, Wright has always been a master of compelling montages. Whether he’s running through Shaun’s various survival plans in Shaun of the Dead or explaining Nicholas’ backstory in the opening moments of Hot Fuzz, Wright seamlessly cuts all over the place without ever losing the audience’s attention.
The most prominent montage in Last Night in Soho arrives after Sandie’s side career as a sex worker is revealed. The haunting sequence sees her dancing in a nightclub with prospective clients and giving them a handful of fake names, to which they all reply, “That’s a lovely name.” Using this repeated line of dialogue (another trope of Wright’s filmmaking), Wright captures the mind-numbing repetitiveness of an entire night in just a few seconds.
Mirror Scare
Mirrors have been used by countless horror classics to create jump scares. A character’s reflection is a fiercely effective place to show them and the audience that they’re not as alone as they think.
Wright parodied this trope a few times in Shaun of the Dead, but he uses it to create a genuine fright in Last Night in Soho when Eloise sees Sandie reflected back at her with a bleeding neck wound.
Steadicam Tracking Shots
The Steadicam is one of Wright’s favorite filmmaking toys. His movies are filled with meticulously staged Steadicam tracking shots, like Shaun going to the shop in Shaun of the Dead or Baby going across the street to get coffee in Baby Driver.
There are a few of Wright’s signature Steadicam shots in Last Night in Soho, pulled off brilliantly by cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung, like when the students are on a night out and when Ellie is fleeing from ghosts in Soho.
Casting Bond Actors
This isn’t a particularly prominent trope of Wright’s filmmaking – and it might not even be intentional – but he has a habit of casting actors from the James Bond franchise in his own movies. Former Bond actor Timothy Dalton played the sinister Simon Skinner in Hot Fuzz, while The World’s End featured both ex-007 Pierce Brosnan and one-time “Bond girl” Rosamund Pike.
Last Night in Soho honors this tradition with the casting of Diana Rigg, who played Bond’s bride in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and Margaret Nolan, who played Bond’s masseuse in Goldfinger. Last Night in Soho marked the final film appearances of both Rigg and Nolan as they both passed away before the movie’s release. It’s dedicated to their memory.
Red Herring
The murder mystery storylines in both Hot Fuzz and Last Night in Soho prove that Wright is a master of the “red herring.” Hot Fuzz is filled with red herrings hinting at an Agatha Christie-style web of intrigue. As it turns out, the reality is much simpler: the N.W.A. just killed anyone who stood in the way of the rustic aesthetic that kept winning “Village of the Year” awards for Sandford.
Last Night in Soho takes a less absurdist approach to its red herring. Terence Stamp gives a memorably menacing turn as a sleazy bar patron that Ellie (and, by extension, the audience) is fully convinced is the present-day version of Jack. However, it turns out that he’s actually an ex-police officer who tried to save Sandie.
Foreshadowing
The most renowned aspect of Wright’s filmmaking style is his use of foreshadowing. Ed unwittingly outlines the whole plot near the beginning of Shaun of the Dead. The pub names in The World’s End subtly hint at what will happen there. Last Night in Soho does plenty of its own foreshadowing with the twist reveal that Ellie’s landlady is an older version of Sandie – and she’s a serial killer.
Wright foreshadows this twist with Ms. Collins’ “no male visitors after eight o’clock” rule and her seemingly non-serious threat to kill John. When Ellie first moves in, Ms. Collins tells her to plug up the drains to keep out the smell of sewage in the summer months. On a second viewing, it’s clear that she actually recommends this because she has rotting corpses in the walls.