It stars Thomasin McKenzie as a naive teenager who moves to London to study fashion design; there she is haunted by visions of Sandie (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), a glamorous young woman who had lived during the Swinging Sixties.

Following its premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival on 4 September 2021, Last Night in Soho was released theatrically in the UK and the US on 29 October 2021 by Universal Pictures and Focus Features, respectively.

Ellie recalls encountering him in her dreams; he was an undercover vice officer who tried to encourage Sandie to escape her life of prostitution.

Sandie then lured the men she was pimped to back to her room and killed them, hiding their bodies in the house's floorboards and walls.

In addition, Sam Claflin plays young vice squad officer Lindsey (credited as Punter #5), Beth Singh portrays English 60s hit singer Cilla Black, Margaret Nolan appears as the Sage Barmaid, while twins James and Oliver Phelps cameo as cloakroom attendants.

He pitched the plot, as a "dark valentine" to London and the Soho neighbourhood, to producers Nira Park and Rachel Prior before the start of filming for The World's End (2013).

[6] But he recalled that his mother's memories of Swinging Sixties London were not always fond ones, and that she once said: "I went to Soho once with my friend and we got harassed by a man and chased out.

"Something that I find truly nightmarish — and I guess there's an element where I'm sort of giving a sharp rebuke to myself — is the danger of being overly nostalgic about previous decades.

Wilson-Cairns told Wright in passing that she had worked as a bartender at The Toucan in Soho for five years and lived around the corner, above The Sunset Strip on Dean Street.

[8] In December 2017, after the press tour for Baby Driver concluded, Wright felt pressure to begin working on a sequel immediately, but decided instead to go in "a radically different direction" for his next film.

He initially had Taylor-Joy in mind for the role of Eloise, but later came around to the idea of her playing Sandie, and she agreed after reading a draft of the script.

[11] Diana Rigg, Terence Stamp, Rita Tushingham, Michael Ajao and Synnøve Karlsen rounded out the rest of the cast in June.

[17] Wright posted several photographs on his Instagram account showing that additional filming had commenced on 24 June 2020 and concluded on 5 August 2020.

When Wright heard a cover version of "Wade In The Water" by the Graham Bond Organisation, he "would just start imagining that first dream".

Wright also chose "Happy House" by Siouxsie and the Banshees from the 1980s, because "the production on that song is incredible" and it fits a "scene in the movie where they are at a student union Halloween dance".

"[23] Taylor-Joy performed "Downtown" by Petula Clark in the film, saying: "It's not every day you're asked to record several versions of an iconic song.

[2][3] In the United States and Canada, the film was released alongside Antlers and the expansion of The French Dispatch, and was projected to gross around $5 million from 3,016 cinemas in its opening weekend.

The site states: "Although it struggles to maintain its thrilling early momentum, Last Night in Soho shows flashes of Edgar Wright at his most stylish and ambitious.

[39] Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph gave the film a score of 4/5 stars, describing it as "a riotous, rascally hybrid of a thing: part glittering love-letter to the disreputable nightlife district in which it takes place, part darting psychological thriller that rips up the letter as soon as it's written before tearfully torching the scraps".

[44] Xan Brooks of The Guardian gave the film 4/5 stars, describing it as "a gaudy time-travel romp that whisks its modern-day heroine to a bygone London that probably never existed outside our fevered cultural imagination", and called it "thoroughly silly and stupidly enjoyable".

[45] David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter described the film as "immensely pleasurable" and said that it "delights in playing with genre, morphing from time-travel fantasy to dark fairy tale, from mystery to nightmarish horror".

[46] Linda Marric of The Jewish Chronicle gave the film 4/5 stars, deeming it "a thrilling, gorgeously acted offering from a filmmaker who is at the top of his craft and knows exactly what he wants from his performers".

[48] Writing for Variety, Guy Lodge criticised aspects of the film, observing "Wright's particular affections for B-movies, British Invasion pop and a fast-fading pocket of urban London may be written all over the film, but they aren't compellingly written into it, ultimately swamping the thin supernatural sleuth story at its heart".

Lodge praised McKenzie's performance, describing her as "never one to let an underwritten character thwart her best efforts, and whose sweetly open, porous, persistently worry-etched features couldn't be more ideally suited to Eloise's ingenuous, new-in-town outlook".

[50] Brad Wheeler of The Globe and Mail gave the film a score of 2.5/4 stars, writing: "Though visually sumptuous and a bunch of fun early on, Edgar Wright's take on sixties and seventies horror eventually devolves into unsatisfying spoof.

"[52] Robert Daniels of RogerEbert.com gave the film a score of 1.5/4 stars, writing that it "is funny and chaotic, slick and stylish, and falls apart in its confounding second half".