Movie review: Last Night In Soho

Anya Taylor-Joy is the current It girl in Hollywood and it's not hard to see why.

From Split and Emma to The Queen's Gambit, fans have been hypnotised by her unusual looks, irresistible talent and chameleonic quality.

She is one of those bona fide generational movie stars. And certainly the main reason to watch Last Night In Soho, which opens in cinemas here today.

Written and directed by Edgar Wright (Baby Driver, Shaun Of The Dead), the psychological horror-thriller is his "Dark Valentine" to London and the Soho neighbourhood of the Swinging Sixties, while Taylor-Joy is perfectly cast as someone whom you can't help but be drawn to.

And she can sing too, her sweet vocals on display in a haunting, downtempo rendition of Petula Clark's peppy iconic hit song Downtown.

RISING STAR

But Thomasin McKenzie (Jojo Rabbit, Old) is the lead here, and she's another young rising star to watch.

She plays Ellie, a naive, starry-eyed small town girl obsessed with the music and fashion of the 60s who moves to London to study fashion design.

She also happens to occasionally sees her dead mother's ghost in mirrors.

After moving into a creepy bedsit owned by an elderly woman (the late Diana Rigg in her final film appearance), Ellie starts having vivid and increasingly disturbing dreams where she's transported back in time to the 60s.

In them, she vicariously lives through a confident woman named Sandie (Taylor-Joy) who auditions to become a nightclub singer and falls in love with a Very Bad Man (Matt Smith).

We become invested in these two damsels in distress, who share an uncanny connection and twisted relationship across time.

But the rose-tinted retro fantasy falls apart when Sandie ends up being pimped as a prostitute and is suspected to have been murdered.

Then in her waking life, Ellie sees blood-soaked visions and is menaced by nightmarish apparitions of faceless men.

She struggles to maintain her sanity, and we wonder if Wright is forcing one of those "hysterical females having a psychotic episode" down our throat.

Because that's where the movie loses its marbles too, and we become weary of and frustrated by our protagonist's misadventures.

Major points for how highly stylised and sexy Last Night In Soho is, with Wright indulging in nostalgia yet at the same time warning about the perils of idealising the past.

But the script derails once the twist of who Sandie is and why Ellie is being haunted emerges.

It is a pity Wright's take on female empowerment is never fully realised too, and an implausible climax almost burns the whole fever dream to the ground.

Rating: 3 Tick

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FILM: Last Night In Soho

STARRING: Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Terence Stamp, Diana Rigg

WRITER-DIRECTOR: Edgar Wright

THE SKINNY: Fashion design student Eloise (McKenzie) is mysteriously able to enter the 1960s where she encounters a dazzling wannabe singer named Sandie (Taylor-Joy), but the glamour is not all it appears to be and things take a darker turn.

RATING: M18