I thoroughly enjoyed Last Night in Soho, part murder mystery, part psychological horror it was entertaining and visually captivating to watch. I knew the premise from watching the trailer, but there are a bunch of plot twists at the end that will surprise you!
***MAJOR SPOILER ALERT***
We see young Eloise Turner, an aspiring fashion designer, get accepted to the London College of Fashion. She loves the swinging 1960s music and style, and has visions of her dead mother. Her gran warns her about moving to London, and what it did to her mother, but Ellie is confident she can take care of herself. We find out her mother committed suicide when Ellie was 7. Ellie is an outcast and doesn't fit in at the party dorm residence in London, so she takes matters into her own hands and rents a top apartment in an old building. The world-weary landlord, Ms. Collins, warns her of a smell in the apartment during the summer and a strict no boys allowed past 8pm policy.
Her first night in the new place, Ellie dreams of herself in the 1960s as another woman named Alexandra, whose nickname is Sandie. Sandie is confident, loves attention, and her style is the epitome of 1960s high fashion. She walks into a club looking for the owner because she wants to sing there, but instead she meets Jack. A knight-in-shining-armor man that punches out a guy that won't take no for an answer. They make a scene, leave in a rush, and he asks her out for the following night. Sandie just happens to live in Ellie's apartment. Ellie's alarm goes off, and she goes to class. Being inspired, she uses the pink dress from dream girl Sandie as part of her design for class.
This first sequence is wonderful, there's lots of mirror-play where you see the other woman in the mirror, it reminded me of Poltergeist III. The 1960s dancing is fun, and Sandie's hair is perfect throughout every scene. Of course, Ellie can't wait to find out what happens next, and neither can the audience!
Mirror mirror on the wall. Things are not as they seem in the hall.
Ellie resumes her dream from the night before, again she's cast as Sandie. Jack picks her up and takes her to an empty bar. She asks what she's doing there, and he got her a singing audition there! She's thrilled, even though it's not the club from the night before. (Her singing sounds a little too contemporary for my liking, but it's ok.) She takes Jack back to her place (Ellie's place in the present) and it's presumed they have sex. Ellie's alarm goes off. Wanting to be more like Sandie, she dyes her hair blonde and gets a vintage white vinyl trench coat. She's stopped on the street by a creepy old man who thinks he knows her. This leads her to thinking that he's Jack from her dreams.
Ellie buys a copy of Sandie's trench coat.
Ellie's dreams start to take a turn for the worse, the club Sandie auditioned at was a girly peepshow, and she ends up as just a chorus girl in the background. Jack is a scumbag and is buddies with the man he punched from the first night. Jack introduces her around and explains to her that she needs to "make nice" with the guys around town to work her way up to a better club. Essentially, he's pimping her out. She runs out, but then we see her in Ellie's same apartment with the guy she was just introduced to. She ends up a go-go dancer prostitute.
Ellie begins to have visions in her waking life of Sandie and all her johns. The johns are faceless and very creepy. So in addition to the creepy old man she thinks is old Jack following her, she sees ghosts too. She becomes unhinged.
The unhinging.
Her guy friend invites her to a Halloween party. The mean girls from the party dorm are dressed as 1990s The Craft. Lol. Siouxsie and the Banshees "Happy House" is playing in the background as she is trying to fit in again at the bar, but the ghosts follow her. She sees Sandie and the johns. She tells her friend she needs air and goes outside in the rain. He follows her, they end up kissing, and she invites him back to her apartment. They sneak upstairs and are going to have sex when Ellie has a bloody vision in the mirror of a knife stabbing and freaks out screaming. She thinks she knows how Sandie died now. The screaming wakes up her landlord, and her friend gets kicked out.
The next day Ellie asks the landlord if anyone died in her room and Ms. Collins is very generic about it and says "people have died in every room in London and on every corner." Ellie goes to class and sees dead people everywhere and rushes out. She sees the dead men everywhere. To help her cope, she goes to the police and tells them about her dreams. The woman there takes her seriously and says she'll look into it. Her guy friend, surprisingly, looks for Ellie and wants to help her in any way he can. Ellie herself begins to go through the microfiche looking for an old case. There's lots of death in London in the 1960s. He helps her look. But she can't escape the ghosts!
Ms. Collins, that sneaky bitch. (Played by Diana Rigg of 1960s Avengers fame.)
Ellie has a freak-out at the library too and runs outside. She sees who she thinks is old Jack. She tries to record him confessing to the murder of Sandie, but he walks away and says, "I didn't kill Sandie, Alex did." and we find out his name is Lindsey, and he was a police officer, that knew Sandie in the 1960s, he even briefly appeared in Ellie's dream! This is a lot for Ellie to process, and she wants to move out of the apartment. She grabs her friend and tells him to wait in the car while she goes inside to let Ms. Collins know she's moving out.
Not Jack, but Lindsey.
We then find out that the lady police officer came by and questioned Ms. Collins, and that Ms. Collins...DUN DUN DUN is Alexandra aka Sandie Collins! SHE KILLED all the men that she slept with back in the 1960s including Jack and stashed them in that apartment in the walls and floors. And she poisoned Ellie's tea to keep her from talking about what she discovered. Ellie's slowly loosing consciousness, and her friend that was in the car comes to the door to check on her. Alexandra / Sandie stabs him and starts slashing at Ellie while she crawls up the stairs. Meanwhile Alexandra / Sandie's cigarette falls and starts the building on fire. Ellie crawls up to her old apartment and sees the faceless men again. They followed her because THEY WANTED HER HELP. They wanted her to expose Ms Collins as their killer. The building burns, Ellie and her friend escape, and Alexandra / Sandie cuts her throat and stays in the burning building.
Ellie stays in fashion school and has a successful end of the semester runway show loosely based on 1960s designs, and we see Ellie look in the mirror one last time. She sees her mother, but also young 1960s Sandie. It's a little cheesy for an ending, but the rest was excellent, so I won't hold it again the movie.
The fashion, soundtrack, story, and visuals were as sharp as a knife. I give this movie 4.5 out of 5 Vesper martinis.
Here's the trailer...
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