Edgar Wright’s “Last Night In Soho” may have been delayed due to the pandemic last year, but the highly anticipated film will finally hit theaters later this year. And as a reward for our patience, Focus Features has released the first trailer for the mysterious time-bending thriller starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie.
In an effort to keep things ambiguous, the plot description says “Last Night In Soho” is about “a young girl, who is passionate about fashion design, mysteriously enters the 1960s, where she encounters her idol, a dazzling wannabe singer. But 1960s London is not what it seems, and time seems to fall apart with shady consequences.”
The trailer hints at a little bit of that when Eloise (played by McKenzie) travels to central London to fulfill her dreams as a fashion designer. However, she finds herself slipping in between two different timelines, one modern, the other in the 1960s where she discovers that she has some sort of connection woman named Sandy, played by Anya Taylor-Joy.
But this is no ordinary connection as the trailer teases Eloise seeing a reflection of Sandy in the mirror, and they start to share bite marks. Soon enough, Sandy becomes a constant figure on Eloise’s mind as she even dyes her hair blonde like Sandy. But is it Eloise who is turning herself into Sandy or is it Sandy who is slowly taking over Eloise’s body.
Of course, the trailer doesn’t answer that and intentionally stays vague in order to keep that mystery alive. Slowly but surely we get to see how Eloise descends into madness, as the trailer goes from using Petula Clark’s “Downtown” to something more sinister and then revealing the cracks of sanity. Because “when the past let’s you in, the truth will come out.”
This is quite unexpected from Wright, who is behind genius films like the Cornetto Trilogy (“Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz,” “The World’s End”), “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World,” and “Baby Driver.” Though each of them had their own Wright twist on the respective genres, “Last Night In Soho” feels more like an homage to the classic psychological horror films of yesteryear. And I personally cannot wait to see it in its entirety.
“Last Night In Soho” also stars Matt Smith, Michael Ajao, Synnøve Karlsen, Diana Rigg, Terence Stamp, and Rita Tushingham.
Focus Features has scheduled “Last Night In Soho” for a October 22, 2021, release.
