Anya Taylor-Joy's Great Performance Was Completely Overlooked in This Twisty British Thriller

Anya Taylor-Joy's Great Performance Was Completely Overlooked in This Twisty British Thriller Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) looking to the distance in Last Night in SohoImage via Focus Features By  Sam Barsanti Published 10 minutes ago Sam Barsanti has written about pop-culture for 10 years, and his work has appeared at The A.V. Club, Primetimer, IGN, and Collider. He has also contributed to the popular daily Hustle newsletter, which covers tech and startup news. He'll happily talk to anyone about comic book movies (he thinks the MCU peaked with Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and giant robots (he thinks some of the Transformers movies are good), and he canonically exists in The CW's "Arrowverse" series of superhero shows. Sam is also a published poet and horror writer, and his fiction work has appeared on The No Sleep Podcast.   Sign in to your Collider account Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap

Anya Taylor-Joy is no stranger to horror, and one might even consider it her particular forte — given her star-making role in The Witch and subsequent appearances in movies like Split and The Menu — but one of her most stylish horror movies is also one of her most underrated: Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho. The time-twisting mystery is closer to a psychological thriller than straight horror, but it is also a rare scary movie from the director of Shaun of the Dead that lacks the sort of knowing wink that Wright is known for. Even better: You can stream it for free on Prime Video with ads.

The movie was met with mostly positive reviews, ending up at 75% on Rotten Tomatoes, but it was very much a flop at the box office. That’s likely because it came out in 2021, which was a rough box office year in general, but the movie deserved better either way. In addition to Taylor-Joy, it starred Thomasin McKenzie, Matt Smith, and Terence Stamp, and it was the final performance of both Margaret Nolan and Diana Rigg.

Why is ‘Last Night in Soho’ Underrated?

Matt Smith as Jack kissing Anya Taylor Joy as Sandie's hand in Last Night in Soho.Image via Focus Features

Anya Taylor-Joy has very distinct features, and a lot of movies use her in order to make an immediately striking impression, like her five-second performance in Dune: Part Two, where Denis Villeneuve simply used her as shorthand for "this character will be important later" (she'll be back in the next one, for anyone who hasn't read Dune Messiah). Last Night in Soho does the same, except she also makes an immediately striking impression on the film’s hero, a young fashion student named Ellie (McKenzie). While struggling with her assignments and her new life in London, Ellie starts having supernaturally vivid dreams about a woman named Sandie (Taylor-Joy) who lived in London in the ‘60s.

As the shy and anxious Ellie becomes more and more drawn to the outgoing and fashionable Sandie, things from the dreams start bleeding into her real life and a mysterious man who seems to know Sandie starts following her. It’s a very fun hook, but it wouldn’t work as well as it does without someone like Taylor-Joy as the ghost-like spirit that is haunting Ellie. She plays Sandie as someone who is mostly unknowable, so the reveal that she’s a real person and not some kind of dream entity makes it all nicely unnerving.

And, again, Wright pulls it all off (depending on how you feel about the ending) very well, proving that his expertise with genre films doesn’t just extend to making thorough satires of them. Of course, he actually hasn’t done that in a long time and has been making more “normal” movies like The Running Man since The World’s End in 2013, but that’s still the kind of movie that made him a big deal. It’s worth noting that he can do other things and that he is also good at those.

Last Night In Soho is streaming for free on Prime Video with ads.

Last Night in Soho

Like R Drama Horror Thriller Release Date October 29, 2021 Runtime 116 minutes Director Edgar Wright Writers Edgar Wright, Krysty Wilson-Cairns

Cast

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• Anya Taylor-Joy
• Lisa McGrillis

Genres Drama, Horror, Thriller Powered by Expand Collapse

• Movie
• Anya Taylor-Joy
• Edgar Wright

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