Edgar Wright’s latest film, “Last Night in Soho” (2021), follows Ellie/Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), who leaves grandma’s house to go to London College of Fashion, but she has a gift, which makes her susceptible to seeing what others cannot. She gets plunged into the sixties and lives vicariously through Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), a confident and ambitious singer who wants to be the next Cilla Black, which becomes a problem when Sandie’s dream turns into a nightmare. Will Ellie be able to make sense of her visions or succumb to the family’s struggle with mental health?

I love early Wright’s work, but after “Baby Driver” (2017), I stopped rushing to the theater. He has a right to go in a more serious direction, and I have a right to lag because I am not as enthusiastic about that shift. For me, Wright was at his best when he worked with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost though that magic waned with “The World’s End” (2013). Add a pandemic and Matt Smith (no offense to him but he is a harbinger of bad movies plus his features do not fill his face—too much blank space, shudder though his overall silhouette and height makes him seem attractive) in the cast, and I’m out! “Last Night in Soho” features Wright’s best visual work, but while elements of the story work, it never comes together or sustains its initial momentum.

Is it Wright’s best visual work or Chung-hoon Chung’s? I am sure that it is a team effort. The latter was the director of photography for “Last Night in Soho,” and he was the cinematographer for such classics as “Oldboy” (2003), “Lady Vengeance” (2005), “Thirst” (2009), “Stoker” (2013) and “The Handmaiden” (2016). If you loved the look of this film, start watching South Korean films. Instead of special effects, this film seamlessly makes Ellie and Sandie into reflections of the other, which was superb in the extensive Café de Paris sequence, through intricate camera and cast choreography. Even though this film was not a musical, it borrows many elements from the genre, but when the film is not in the past and does not have music, it drags into the trite tedium of endlessly startled characters running from scene to scene that will make you beg for the film to end.

Wright cowrote “Last Night in Soho” with Krysty Wilson-Cairns, who co-wrote “1917” (2019) with Sam Mendes, another visually sumptuous film with a lagging story. I am not going to blame Wilson-Cairns, but suggest that if men like Wright want to advocate for women outside of their fictional narratives, maybe let Wilson-Cairns get a shot at creating the entire movie so we can see the quality of her work on its own. Wright and Mendes should go to bat for her as producers so she can do her own project. The story of this film depicts most men as sexually exploitive abusers, but being an ally for women is more than calling out bad behavior. Promoting opportunity and taking affirmative steps to advance the cause in the real world would help. Let’s not stop with women’s dreams coming true in narratives.

“Last Night in Soho” has an ambitious story. It wants to be a coming-of-age story, a period piece, a horror mystery, a supernatural thriller. It comes very close to working before it falls apart by wading into Shyamalan territory with needing a twist. When the twist came, I did not see it coming, but I also was not surprised. For a supernatural story to work, I need a writer to really think about how the supernatural elements work, and it did not feel as if they devoted that effort to Ellie’s gift. It was the equivalent of “The Walking Dead” pretending that zombies ate Glenn then changed the entire angle of the camera to show that he escaped. It feels like cheating, and I do not care if it was a visual, spiritual metaphor, I still hate it. A filmmaker does not have to show their work, but as a viewer, we can sense the difference between a rich world and a gimmick just used as a launchpad. 

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“Last Night in Soho” makes it seem as if Jack (Smith) murdered Sandie, but it was a metaphorical death of her dream, morality and innocence. The twist is that Sandie is still alive and a serial killer. So Ellie can see ghosts and is psychic enough to walk in Sandie’s shoes by proximity to her objects, but not enough to realize that her landlady, Ms. Collins (Diana Rigg in her final performance), is Sandie or that the legendary Terrence Stamp is the cop. Eyeroll. It was an excuse to follow through with the breadcrumbs about not smoking and near misses of cars hitting people. The writers wanted those jump scares more than they wanted to explore Ellie. Once Sandie comes on screen, instead of being a riveting character in her own right, Ellie becomes less interesting because she is just a vehicle to get us to Sandie. She is underdeveloped, and it was disappointing as hell.

Also while I have no issue with “Last Night in Soho” disapproving of a serial killer, it is so weird to me that the film devotes all this time to Sandie’s abuse, but will not allow us a “Midsommar” like brief guilty catharsis when she turns the tables. Here is where I think that Wright fails his story. If Ellie is sympathetic and not horrified at discovering that Sandie is a serial killer and still sees her as a person worth saving, then the film needed to reflect it. Instead the film resonates when her victims’ ghosts want vengeance. Their grasping actions contradict their desires by holding Ellie back, but also handing her the phone. It is irritating and nonsensical. Wright creates these images of violating hands without exploring how Ellie feels about being sexually assaulted every night in Sandie’s shoes. It shows it in an exterior way, not an intimate one. We witness it as outsiders, but then when she is ready to consummate her relationship with John in that same bed, it defies logic. Wright tries to do it by occasionally showing Ellie’s POV of faceless Johns looming over her, but in the final sequence, mostly abandons it. Wright never explores how much Ellie feels. It is telling that the denouement’s big terror that must be stopped is a woman on a vengeance fueled rampage. We disapprove of male sexual violence, but a woman reacting to that violence is the real monster. “Monster” (2003) did a better job of walking that tightrope.

Also if “Last Night in Soho” decided that a woman villain is the way to go, then go for it! It is possible that Ms. Collins has been killing her female tenants for years, and they never left in the middle of the night. Instead of just explaining away her behavior as a reaction to abuse, explore her anger at the possibility that other young women may achieve their dreams, not her. Make her toxic and sympathetic. The dynamic of the harmful older woman who seems friendly exists in the real world so it would be easy to throw it onscreen, but Wright never experienced the pet or threat dynamic among women. As depicted, Ms. Collins deciding to kill Ellie seems like a reach dropped in so she could get punished out of our desire to save Ellie.

“Last Night in Soho” missed an opportunity to make Ellie interesting by paralleling Ellie’s link to her mother’s spectre to these visions. The film should have spent a little more time showing how Ellie interacted with her mother. Ellie is actively seeking out mother figures in the physical and spectral realm—the bar owner, her teacher and Ms. Collins. For Ellie to become her own person, she must stop wanting to live her mother’s life and saving her mother through reaching out to other lost souls. The pivotal point in the film is when Sandie becomes a chorus girl in the burlesque show, and Ellie becomes repulsed yet she still has moments when she tries to break through the mirror and embrace her. The past can affect Ellie, but she cannot change the past. There needed to be a more visual mirroring between Ms. Collins and Sandy at the end when Ellie tries to save her. It does not make visual or narrative sense in the final scene when she sees Sandy’s spectre in the mirror. Yes, Ellie relates to Sandy as a peer, but by the end, she realizes that she is not. She is just another mother figure with mental health issues. The denouement needed to reflect it. After that epiphany, we should never see Sandie again, only Ms. Collins. If we are trying to say that by Ms. Collins accepting her death was a redemptive step, she gets to live in death as her pure self, but representing that self as Sandie is a dismissive way of handling the majority of Ms. Collins’ life. True redemption would find a balance between the two. Make her an adult Anakin Skywalker spectre wearing something nice, but being her true age like “Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back” (1980). 

“Last Night in Soho” failed Ellie and women by not giving her any authentic women friendships with people her age and just giving her a love interest, John (Michael Ajao). All women other than Ellie are varying degrees of evil, including Sandie. How is a film with a woman protagonist perpetuating the Highlander cool girl myth-there can only be one? John is great, but dumb as hell in the actual film. In the bonus features, it is revealed that John has a valid reason to be attracted to Ellie: they both have more experience designing clothes. The film never shows it. Instead John overlooks almost getting caught up in Ms. Collins misinterpreting Ellie’s reactions to her visions as attempted rape. Anything that happens between Ellie and John after this scene defies logic. I am not a guy, but considering how many men raise concerns about false rape accusations when confronted with a credible one, I do not think that a black man would risk it all for Ellie even if they shared the same special interest. I know that we need Ellie to talk to someone, but a friend, not a love interest would make more sense.

“Last Night in Soho” came out before “Master” (2022), but I noticed similarities between the latter’s freshman story and Ellie’s. Also the score sounded like Luniz featuring Michael Marshall’s “I Got 5 on It,” which felt like an audio reference to “Us” (2019).