'Last Night in Soho' horror revival is more like a dose of 'so what?'

In popular mythology, London was the heart of the swinging '60s, when youngsters threw off the dreary chains of the previous generation's working-class drudgery and arrived in the metropolis to break cultural, sexual and philosophical boundaries under the spell of The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, dressed in the freedom celebrating designs of Mary Quant.

But behind the heady new frontier lay a darker, grimier, less palatable reality where young women were pimped out by cockney gangsters to leering Establishment men looking for a good time under the glare of Soho’s flashing neon “sex, sex, girls, girls” lights.

There were already films made in the actual '60s that warned of the dangers lurking behind the era’s permissive façade, from the terrifying voyeurism of Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom to the high-art existentialism of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up; the claustrophobic psychological breakdowns of Roman Polanski’s The Tenant and Repulsion and the death knell of '60s utopian idealism offered by the surreal identity and gender fluid consciousness smashing horrors of Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance.

There were also the plethora of low-budget, gory B-Movie slasher horrors made in Italy and known as giallo or, if you’re a more culturally sensitive type, “Spaghetti Slashers” by directors like Mario Bava and Dario Argento and notable for the violently blood-soaked punishments they meted out to their sexually liberated female victims.

Enter director Edgar Wright, the master of style over substance and reference-heavy pastiche, to show us he’s seen all these films and thinks that’s all he needs to make his own present-day cinematic be-all-and-end-all of '60s psychological horror.

His supposedly nightmarish pro-feminist #MeToo revisionist '60s tale is written by the director in collaboration with 1917 co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns. It begins in present day Cornwall. 

We're introduced to the optimistic, naive, '60s-obsessed dreamer Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) who, since her mother's suicide when she was seven years old, has lived in the sheltered embrace of her grandmother, Peggy ('60s-era “It girl,” Rita Tushingham, in the first of a series of  telling casting choices) who's raised her on a diet of '60s pop divas like Cilla Black, Petula Clark and Dusty Springfield and stories of her one fateful trip to London many years ago.

When Eloise receives the exciting news that she’s off to London to pursue her dreams of fashion designer stardom, she packs up her records, hugs Granny goodbye and promises she’ll watch out for the lecherous men who populate the urban forests of the big city. There she finds that the men are dangerous, the women in her class are spiteful caricatures and that “London can be a lot”.

She decides to leave her student accommodation and finds a '60s-era bedsit run by the curmudgeonly Ms Collins (Diana Rigg in what would be The Avengers star’s final role). It’s here that things get messy as Eloise finds herself in a Nightmare on Elm Street fever dream in which she’s transported back in time into the life of a previous resident from that era, the beautiful, enigmatic blonde Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy).

At first Eloise is entranced by the glamour and glitz of Sandie’s journey under the neon lights of '60s Soho as she ambitiously sets about carving a career as the next nightclub singing sensation. When Sandie meets  dashing young Jack (Matt Smith), it looks like her dreams will be realised thanks to his impressive connections and dashing charms, which she quickly falls for.

Back in the real world, Eloise is so enamoured by Sandie that she uses her as a muse for her retro fashion creations, dyes and styles her hair and face to imitate her and looks set to achieve her own dreams of success. Things soon descend into gory hell as Eloise watches Sandie become a sex worker enslaved to Jack, who, it turns out, is very far from a Prince Charming.

Wright’s reasonably coherent and visually evocative efforts up to this point are quickly undone by the sheer mind-numbing repetition and all-over-the-place panic that envelops the film in its dreadful rush towards an obvious final act. This almost unwatchable section of the film serves to undo any of its revisionist potential, instead highlighting the glaring holes in the plot and the puddle-shallow drawing of its characters.

It leaves you laughing at what’s supposed to be serious, yawning at what’s supposed to be mind-blowing and immune to its over-the-top, fake-blood-spattered violence. Flames engulf the film in a tedious, over-extended revelation — a final twist you can see coming from decades away. Last Night in Soho? More like last night in so what. If there’s a takeaway here, it’s that they did it all so much better in the 60s, innit?

• 'Last Night in Soho' is on circuit.