Last Night in Soho (2021)

I don't know the last time that I was looking forward to a film quite as much as I was looking forward to Last Night in Soho. I have been waiting to see this film since last October but the pandemic kept pushing it back and for a long time I was looking forward to this and No Time to Die to the most. The set up of the film is that Eloise (Thomasin Mackenzie) travels from her home that she shares with her Gran to attend a fashion school in London but after spending one night with her nightmare dorm mates she takes up lodgings with Ms Collins played by the late great Diana Rigg. She soon starts seeing events involving Sandie from the 1960’s who is trying to become a singer but soon becomes involved with Jack (Matt Smith) and we see Sandie being ‘killed’ and the film is Eloise trying to get justice for Sandie as she seemingly starts to lose her mind.

I really love this film. Firstly, the performances are really good. Anya Taylor Joy and Thomasin McKenzie are really good and are complete contrasts of each other. Joy’s Sandie is a confident and ambitious person whilst McKenzie’s Eloise is shy and always seems like she is fighting to stay in control of what she is seeing. Matt Smith is really good as Jack. He starts off as a charming guy who can make things happen but very quickly shows his true colours and basically becomes a pimp. Terence Stamp I think has a slightly underwritten role but manages to make his character seem just as unlikeable as Jack. For a long time I honestly thought that Stamp and Smith were playing the same character. I think this might be because of how the trailers made it seem but in reality Stamp’s character was the cop that we saw in one particular flashback. Michael Ajao is very good as John who becomes Eloise’s love interest and always seems to want to help her and even when she freaks out when they are about to make out he is still trying to help her. I thought that it was a lovely performance from him. Perhaps the single best performance comes from Diana Rigg who at first seems like she is just the cranky landlady but in the final act the films reveals that she is in fact Sandie and the blood that we saw wasn't from Sandie but in fact from Jack which I genuinely didn't see any of that coming and to be honest I wouldn't have tried to work it out cause I was just enjoying what I was seeing and all the great visuals that cinematographer Jeong Jeong-hun who worked on stuff like Oldboy and the first IT film. He makes this film work and if it weren't for the great visuals then the film would have failed miserably. Diana Rigg goes out in style with a performance that might have only mae sense in the final 20 minutes but it was bloody good. The last shot of her is in a burning room and she is sitting on the end of the bed and it just a great visual and its obvious why she doesn't feature too much in the promotional material because it would have ruined the twist.

The things that dont quite work are the gang of classmates that seem to exist purely to snigger at Eloise for being slightly different to them. The night when there is the party in the dorm and she decides to move out is exactly what I would have done. The characters don't really contribute to anything although Jocasta was by far the worst. Also at the end the film decides that she can just resume her career with no apparent repercussions for nearly stabbing Jocasta with some scissors but these are minor things because everything else is amazing in this film. Some might think that the film is style over substance then I think they are missing a lot from this film. It’s not the best Edgar Wright film because its not better than Hot Fuzz but its a damn good second best and shows that Edgar Wright is more than just flashy cut scenes and transitions.

The Shining (1980)

With the Shining celebrating its 45th Anniversary, it felt like a great opportunity to watch this classic at the cinema. There is a documentary which serves as a very good companion piece exploring all the theories associated with this film which range from good to downright ridiculous. The movie sees Jack Nicholson play Jack Torrance who takes on a job as a caretaker of the Overlook Hotel during the winter months so that he can write his novel. Things seem to go strange quite quickly though and it becomes a fight between Jack and Wendy.

As the movie progresses things get very bleak and one of the things that I do like about this film is that it’s very well shot. The claustrophobic feel of the latter half of the film adds an extra layer of tension to what was already a tense film. It really doesnt take long for the strange vibe to start as it starts from the flying over the lake then there are the continuous shot of following Danny around on his little bike.

In the past I would have said that I could have done without Wendy because even though she’s suppose to be in terror at what her husband has turned into and I just found myself being slightly bored by her. As the years and rewatches have gone by I still find portions of Shelley Duvall’s acting to be a little ropey but overall I have changed my opinion of her performance. Nicholson is in fine form here and pretty much steals the film. Every time he was on screen he was in complete control and every time he wasn’t on screen, I took this as an opportunity to take a mental breather and wait for the next time and that was probably a wise thing to do. The infamous ‘here’s Johnny’ line was exactly as good every single time I hear it. There is a reason why it's iconic and it's because it’s truly terrifying.

As a movie, I thought that it was brilliant. One of the best horror films ever made because no matter how many times I have seen this film I am totally engaged with what is happening. It’s very tense and very well acted and also I liked the story. This was the first time that I saw it at the cinema and the big screen is the perfect place and the version I saw was apparently the American cut because there were a couple of things that were new such as the extended doctor scene with Wendy and the shot of the skeletons sitting in the reception area at the hotel. There are probably more but they dont come to mind. If you ever get the chance to see this film on the big screen then you should because its makes the film even better.

Five Nights at Freddy's 2 (2025)

So the first one made enough money so that we were inevitably going to get a sequel. I still don't know as much about the games as I did when the first one came out. The set up is that the original Fazbar saw a young girl was murdered in 1982 and her spirit got into a marionette and she has developed a hatred of parents because when the girl tried to get adults attention they just dismissed her.The story then moves back to ‘present day’ where Mike and Abby are trying to move on after the events of the first film with Abby missing her ‘friends’.

This is nowhere near as good as the first one. I think that comes across as Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 Part 1 because this doesn't feel like it has got a satisfactory conclusion. The line about them coming back suggests we are getting a third film and then Vanessa getting possessed shows that her story isn’t over. Other issues with the film include the ‘climax’ where Mike uses the music box to release Abby from the marionette’s power seemed a bit underwhelming as when this sort of thing happens elsewhere it would be a bigger deal and here it seems to end in about 4 seconds. They also make a big deal out of Skeet Ulrich being in the film with his connection to the Scream films and would it be a possible reunion with Matthew Lillard but sadly that didn’t happen because of Ulrich’s blink and you miss is cameo and also the fact that Lillard is in about three scenes and they are all flashbacks. Although in the mid-credits scene his costume from the first one is seen and apparently there was more post credits stuff which suggests that Ulrich might feature more in the next one.

There are some good things about this film. I think that Piper Rubio is quite likeable as Abby and she manages to liking and being friends with the killer robots seem like a sensible thing. It just would be nice if she were given more to do because I found Abby more of an interesting character than Vanessa. Wayne Knight was great as Mr. Berg who is a teacher that doesn't seem to like Abby for some reason but his death is quite good. Mckenna Grace is also great in her brief appearance as the presenter of a paranormal series which is starting to appear cliched but she makes the most of her brief time.

This hasn’t been advertised as the first part of a trilogy or a two parter so things feel like they are starting things off just to be resolved in another film. It’s a bit like Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends. I’m getting a bit fed up with films spilling over into more than its current entry. Definitely a step down from the first one.

Five Nights at Freddy's (2023)

So I was aware of the video game which I have played probably once but found it be fun and scary but that was several years ago so it was a worry that the film took so long to be made. The plot is that the film follows Mike who is given a job as a security guard at an abandoned family restaurant where the animatronics come alive. From what I can remember, the plot to the video game is quite simple so the film has to pad things out to get the film to running time and they do that by introducing a subplot where Mike’s brother was kidnapped when he was a kid and uses music to get into a sleeping state where he goes back to the day it happened to try and see if any clues can help locate his brother. 

I did enjoy this film, I thought that the film didn't really suffer from any pacing issues and the performances were quite good. I thought Josh Hutcherson was good as Mike who was trying to do his best in raising his sister but suffering from the guilt of what happened to his brother. Piper Rubio was very likeable as Abby and the ‘friendship’ she had with the animatronics was lovely to see and gave Mike a reason not go just destroy the animatronics.

There were things that didn't quite work for me such as Vanessa hanging around to the point where it was obviously quite early on that she knows more about what is happening or has happened at Freddy’s. Also the idea that Matthew Lillard’s character was behind everything at the restaurant seemed to be a little bit silly. Also I would have liked it to be a bit bloodier. I’m not the biggest fan of gore but I think that a little bit of blood can go a long way. I also thought the sub-sub plot with the evil aunt wanting the girl just so she could have the benefits seemed only to serve the fact that the film needed to kill some people and there was a limited number of characters.

It’s clear that there are going to be more films as this will have made its money back as Blumhouse is a dab hand at making things cheap and then making a big profit. Normally Blumhouse films aren't the best in terms of quality but I have to admit that I was surprised at how good the film was despite being from the same studio that gave us the most recent Exorcist movie. Not being a die-hard fan of the game, I cant say whether it honours the game but as a horror film it does what it needs to do even if it isnt successful in all areas.