last night in soho (yap/my thoughts)

Basically the movie is abt this girl who moves from the countryside to London to go to fashion school, and she has some sort of psychic/supernatural abilities. when she gets there, her roommates are awful, so she moves out of student housing into this old lady’s spare room. However, she starts having dreams about a girl from the 60s who’s trying to be a singer. Eventually, the dreams go from fun to freaking scary and she starts seeing/hallucinating the dream characters irl. 

Overall, I’m a big fan of the main character Ellie (the girl who has the dreams/visions), she’s honestly the type of person I’d want to be friends with irl (personality-wise). however! I have the flavor of anxiety that demands I act like everything’s fine and normal no matter what, so when the she started having hallucinations (visions? Idk) I was like “girl people r gonna think ur weird!!” Which is a me problem, and also id also freak out if I saw the shit she saw. Still though, I would’ve liked to see more of like needing to act normal etc. Like, at one point she literally almost stabbed another girl with scissors and that never got followed up on. She just kind of ran off which is real but GIRL. 

BIG BIG FAN OF THE LOVE INTEREST! Normally I HATE romance (probably bc im gray/demi-romantic) and maaaybe some more buildup would’ve been nice but overall he’s a really chill dude, and huge W for still fucking with Ellie even after she hallucinated/had visions a few times and then accepting her explanations. On the other hand, why didn’t he invite her over to his place, eg after she said she couldn’t have guys at her place, or when she said she didn’t want to stay the night at her place? He might have a roommate (not great for hookups) but that’s probably better than Ellie hallucinating in her room… Ellie’s roommates have a bunch of guys over really early on (including him which was how he and Ellie met), so there clearly aren’t (strict) rules about that kind of stuff.  

I also LOVE the way the movie played with reality/dream states, with Ellie and the girl she was dreaming about (sandie) switching in the mirror, on and off-screen, etc. there was a motif of flashing lights throughout the movie especially before Ellie started dreaming or hallucinating, and I’d probably need another watch to get my thoughts in order but I fw the vibes :3 

Spoilers!! / warning for mentions of s-xual violence/sa — 

So when the dreams start getting scary, it’s because sandie learns about the reality of being a star, which is essentially entertaining, take that as you will, the creepy old men with connections! Ellie then starts seeing these creepy ass dudes with distorted faces and no actual features, which were the men sandie had to sleep with. partway through the movie Ellie sees sandie get stabbed to death by her “manager,” and then tries to find the killer. The twist is that sandie didn’t actually die, but killed her “manager” and then most or all of the other guys who hurt her #girlboss !!! She’s also the woman who Ellie is renting the apartment from! 

My main question is, if sandie didn’t die, why did Ellie see her story the way she did? My first theory/assumption was that, yk, sandie’s ghost was confused and reached out to Ellie so that Ellie could bring the killer to justice and stuff. Literally there’s a part where Ellie sees sandie walking around the city asking “what happened to me? What happened to me?” 

There was also a moment where I thought it was gonna flip and portray the guys sandie killed as victims right by the end, which I feel was weird and unnecessary? Like, sure, they’re probably not happy ghosts either, but they should know wtf they did. FORTUNATELY, that did not happen. misogyny fakeout ig?? So, the possibility that it was those men and not sandie reaching out to Ellie is also kind of out (I dont think it was likely anyway, considering how the flashbacks were from Sandie’s pov anyway and made them rightfully seem like monsters). Which leads us back to a) why did Ellie see these things and b) why include this misogyny takeout? 

The old woman says that her old self (ie sandie) “died” (either out of trauma some time during her repeated abuse or when she killed her “manager”), so maybe we’re supposed to treat “sandie” like a different person from the old lady that exists in the current time. That may have also been why ellie saw sandie being stabbed to death when really it was sandie that had done the stabbing. Idk, I still feel like it doesn’t line up as well as it could, especially since Ellie’s perception switches between the old woman and sandie. At the end, the apartment catches fire and the old lady decides to stay and die rather than live and go to jail, saying that she’s been in a prison this whole time. Maybe she wanted someone to know her story before she died? I can’t really think of something that ties it up the way I want it to. Idk. 

There’s also a sort of subplot with this creepy old guy, who Ellie thinks is the murderer (for literally no reason other than the fact that he’s old and lowkey creepy??) before he gets hit by a car and she finds out that he warned sandie about staying in the entertainment business in one of her previous dreams/in the past. I mean, yes he was old and creepy, but there are PLENTY of old and creepy guys out there. I really don’t know how or why Ellie decided that he was the “manager” and murderer? Especially since she literally knew the “manager’s” name, and didn’t check to see what the old man’s name was. Like, it could’ve worked if the writers hadn’t put 0 effort into, like, expanding it… sigh… 

I’m not sure I like the ending- Ellie treats a mini collection based off of the 60s, and at the very end she sees sandie in the mirror smiling at her. I think it wrapped the movie up much better than ending after the house fire and the old woman dying, but I’m not sure I liked it. sandie’s appearance here could either support that she and the old woman are two different people or completely discredit it— if she and the old woman were one person, the old woman should’ve appeared, right? (Since, hopefully, they would’ve been able to find peace in death?) On the other hand, instead of drawing Ellie into her story, she quietly supports Ellie, maybe because Ellie helped “free” her.

If something’s ambiguous, it should either be because the necessary information is (and feels like it should be!) out of reach, or because different options fit equally well, and NOT because neither option really works!!!

Overall, it was a fun watch, but the more I think about it, the more the whole thing kind of falls apart :<