Movie Reviews

[Fantastic Fest] Last Night in Soho: Charmed and Chilled Us to Death

Published

5 years ago

September 29, 2021

Edgar Wright’s deep dive of Soho is an exquisitely made thriller that changes the pace and direction of the room for its entire runtime. It seems that giallo cinema, or at the very least giallo inspired cinema, is making a strange and welcome come back and its doing so by way of auteur directors who are giving us something that is totally off the barometer of what is mainstream. Both, Wright’s Last Night in Soho and James Wan’s Malignant have come out swinging on a return to gialli films and a new wave in a cinematic blast.

Last Night in Soho follows small town Eloise to Central London with big dreams of becoming a fashion designer. Upon arrival, she discovers that she is a little more old fashioned when it comes to music tastes and her social life. After discovering that she isn’t going to fit in with her party all night, bullying roommates, she decides to rent a room belonging to a nice older lady who shares a lot more of Eloise qualities than girls her own age.

It really doesn’t take Wright to turn up the stylistic dial to 11 and sweep Eloise back to swinging 60’s London. Wright achieves this by placing Eloise within the shoes of the beautiful soul singing, Sandy (Anya Taylor-Joy). Sandy matches Eloise in pretty much all the ways a new to the big ciy dreamer could.

Wright does an incredible job of technically putting Eloise and Sandy in the same shoes. An immense amount of in camera magic was used to place both girls in the same place at the same time.

Both Anya Taylor-Joy and Thomasin McKenzie are incredibly moving in their respective roles. Each bringing with it their own heartbreaking turns in the world where dreams are crushed willy nilly and hopes and dreams are quickly shoved under the carpet.

All isn’t as it seems with the beautiful Sandy. Jack (Matt Smith) is promising Sandy stardom in London and might not be up to snuff. However, Smith plays his classic and superb debonair approach to the role of Jack too charming for Eloise or an audience to resist. The former Doctor Who star is truly working magical charm all over the place in the film’s first act.

The moving pieces all set up for a thriller that keeps the audience on their toes as the film bobs and weaves under and above expectations.

Last Night in Soho is incredibly rich in its design and colors. The best of Argento and Bava definitely come to mind. A gialli blueprint for all out style is used wonderfully by Wright who proves he is a true student and master of the sub-genre.

I’m in love with the era of the sixties in Central London. Wright does a painstakingly, awe- inspired recreation of the world and lets us live in it right along side Eloise.

Both Diana Rigg and Terrence Stamp add their classic presence, heart and even sinister side to the film. Both amazing classic actors are at the top of their games offering a big part of their cinematic fingerprints in incredible ways.

The film is as heart-wrenching as it is wonderfully comprised. The writing for SOHO goes a long way for keeping us deeply grounded with its characters. By the finale, Wright convinces the audience to all but fight for the lead. A remarkable writing achievement and brought home by the whirlwind of beauty and grace that both Joy and McKenzie bring to their roles.

Last Night in Soho keeps everyone on the edge of their seat by way of making us fall in love with its two main characters. By the end of the film, no fault can be found in Eloise or Sandy. The horrors of the film, go from the cold-blooded killer type to the supernatural in single beats. Wright orchestrates those break neck turns in genre masterfully throughout.

Last Night in Soho will go down in my top 10 of the year. Much like Wright’s other films it begs to immediately be watched and re-watched. It’s a horror film that ups the ante around every single corner it takes and constantly shocks in delightful ways. Wright’s film is elegant, electric and all out chilling . It will reintroduce audiences to giallo films and there isn’t anything more I could ask for.

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Movie Reviews

‘ZombieCON Vol. 1’ Gets the Con Right. The Zombies Arrive When They Want To.

Published

1 day ago

April 28, 2026

Luna Gray

ZombieCON Vol. 1 follows Rocket’s Rockets, a cosplay crew who are three-time regional anime convention champions, two of whom also wrote the film alongside their director, and it delivers a genuinely heartfelt love letter to nerd culture.

Just think Knights of Badassdom, a horror film that needs you to understand why these people care about what they care about before it can ask you to care about them. Although, I think the whole “Cosplay is lame”! Thing died out a long time ago.

The Comedy

The practical makeup effects look like the work of actual cosplayers competing, not Hollywood’s approximation of cosplayers competing, and the distinction is the difference between a film that is looking at this world from the outside and one that has been living in it.

The characters carry the specific mixture of expertise and softness that comes from living inside a somewhat shunned culture. However, ZombieCON Vol. 1 leans into that culture in a loving, non judgemental way.

The Scott Pilgrim energy in the fight staging earns its references rather than just pointing at them. The anime visual grammar is sincere, not ironic, which is the only register in which this kind of thing is actually funny. The film borrows inspiration from just about everyone but somehow manages to do it respectfully.

The Cast

Punkie Johnson came to this from Saturday Night Live, and the gap between her and the rest of the ensemble is perceptible in every scene they share. She finds the timing on lines that are still looking for their timing, lands the joke at the exact moment before the scene needs to move on, and the effect is that everything around her becomes more controlled in her presence.

Erin Áine as Claire carries the film’s stranger turns without explaining them. The character is asked to move from one kind of story into another, several times, in ways the film does not prepare you for, and Áine moves with it without telegraphing the transition or breaking register. Manny Luke’s Rocket is calibrated to produce friction from the opening scene, and Luke commits to it without softening it or winking at the audience about it.

What It Is

ZombieCON Vol. 1 has a first act that takes thirty-one minutes to produce its first zombie, a budget that shapes what the horror can do once the horror arrives, and a cast that makes both of those things survivable.

The audience for this kind of film has been burned before by entries that treat cosplay culture as the setup for a punchline. This one does not do that. It lives inside the culture rather than observing it, and the result is a horror comedy that earns the affection it is asking for even when the seams are showing.

ZombieCON Vol. 1 is free on Tubi.

Movie Reviews

‘Don’t Die’ Is a Good Friday Night Horror Film And That Is Enough.

Published

2 days ago

April 27, 2026

Luna Gray

Don’t Die hits UK digital April 27 via Miracle Media. Benjamin Stark wrote and directed it. It played Panic Fest 2024 and spent the better part of two years making the quiet festival rounds, waiting for the right audience to find it. That audience is you.

What Happens

Jenks, played by Theodus Crane, needs medication he cannot afford. He breaks into a small-town pharmacy after hours. This was supposed to be clean. Nobody was supposed to be there. The pharmacist, Julia, played by Virginia Newcomb, was working late. She gets shot. Not knowing what else to do, Jenks takes her exactly where she tells him to take her.

This turns out to be a remote cabin run by a small collective quietly distributing medication to people who cannot access it through legal channels. The Robin Hood framing is warm, and the film offers it genuinely before slowly removing the warmth.

The Turn

The group running the cabin is not irrational. They believe what they are doing matters. They believe the math is simple. People need blood and organs, medication costs money, two strangers showed up and nobody outside knows where they are. Jenks figures out what that math adds up to about two minutes before the film shows it explicitly, and Crane plays the moment of comprehension exactly right. Quiet. Still. The kind of fear that does not move.

Stark earns the horror here because the people doing terrible things are not doing them out of cruelty. They have a system. They have a purpose. No villain monologue. No sadistic speech. They are calm and businesslike about it. That calm is what makes the third act work. Horror is rarely as effective as when the threat makes a kind of sense.

The Cast

Crane carries it. He plays Jenks as a man who keeps choosing decency as the available options narrow, and that consistency is what makes the back half hit as hard as it does. The performance never reaches for sympathy. It does not need to.

Newcomb as Julia is the other weight-bearing wall. She has the harder job. Her character moves from victim to something more complicated without the script telegraphing the shift. She handles it without calling attention to the handling.

Joshua Burge rounds out the central trio as Randy, the friend who shows up when needed and clocks the situation faster than any reasonable person should. If you don’t have a Randy in your life, make sure to get one.

What It Is and Is Not

Don’t Die was marketed as horror. It earns the label by the end, but it arrives there through crime thriller territory, and the patience of the first two acts is deliberate and correct. The tension builds quietly. When the horror finally arrives it lands harder because of the time spent getting there.

The budget limitations are present and real. Small locations, a tight cast, minimal spectacle. Stark works within them rather than against them, and for the most part it does not show. The pacing stumbles in the back half, running about five minutes longer than it should in the wrong places. There are moments where the momentum stalls. Neither is fatal.

It does not have much to say about healthcare beyond using it as a mechanism for the plot. That is fine. Not every film needs a thesis. This one tells a good story, maintains tension across most of its runtime, delivers a few genuine scares, and knows exactly what it is. Most low-budget horror manages one of those things.

Don’t Die is on UK digital now. Good Friday night film.

Movie Reviews

Content Is Now on Digital. Watch It Twice.

Published

2 days ago

April 27, 2026

Luna Gray

Content, Adam Meilech’s screenlife horror satire, arrives on UK digital April 27 via GrimmVision following a strong festival run that included Grimmfest 2025. The whole film plays out across phones and laptop screens. It opens on a sham. It ends somewhere you did not expect to go.

What It Is

The opening scene drops you inside Therapals, a fake online therapy platform where the therapists are just untrained people trying to earn a paycheck. The first patient our protagonist connects with has the energy of an angry Ryan Reynolds and, with complete calm, tells her he is thinking about killing his neighbor.

From there Meilech begins stacking story on top of story in a way that will either lose you or thrill you, and which one depends entirely on your tolerance for the extremely meta. At the center is AJ, played by Meilech himself: actor, writer, director, stalker, kidnapper, psychopath.

While there is a clear line to be drawn from Content and Milk & Serial, Meilech provides a wonderful villain. His polite swagger and genuine enthusiasm make one of the most powerfuly wicked online personas I have seen in a while.

The Cast and the Method

The cast is Megan Boehmcke, Alex Mills, and Vaune Suitt alongside Meilech, operating under conditions that range from unpleasant to genuinely alarming. AJ records himself playing therapist to himself and plays the recordings back. He pays a stranger to pose as a mentor figure for his male actor, who believes he is in on a bit the whole time. He performs takes over and over in the Kubrick tradition until he gets what he wants. Eventually he just moves his lead into his apartment.

To get a real reaction during a shoot, he shows up and actually hits the actor. The poor actor, still in the scene, asks if they can reshoot. This dude is so desperate for a part, he is willing to show he can make his pain more entertaining.

Where It Sits

The several story arcs running at once can be genuinely hard to follow and Content is not interested in making things easier. That is a feature, not a flaw. The bad guy is normal looking. He lives in a shared apartment. He does not signal his intentions in any way that would help you see it coming. There is real secondhand cringe to watching private moments captured without the subjects knowing, which is the film’s most effective trick, and Meilech commits to it completely.

It lands somewhere between Milk and Serial and Creep in the first half, and ends up closer to Funny Games meets Better Watch Out by the final act. That is an unusual place to land. It is also exactly the right one. Content is available now on UK digital via GrimmVision.