DOUBLE JEOPARDY

Two young women with big dreams discover that London can be the stuff of nightmares in Edgar Wright’s disturbing, dazzling Last Night In Soho. Total Film cowers on set as Wright terrorises Thomasin McKenzie and Anya Taylor-Joy in the horror event of the year.

- JAMIE GRAHAM

It’s 8 August 2019, and Total Film is clubbing. Never mind that it’s only 5pm on a blinding hot summer’s day; inside the Inferno nightclub in Clapham, London, it’s day 56 of a 70-day shoot on Edgar Wright’s sixth feature, Last Night In Soho, and a Halloween party is in full swing. Orange lanterns hang from the ceiling. Paper flames ripple upwards from the floor. Black balloons shimmy in swirling dry ice.

“HERE WE GO! ENJOY YOURSELVES, LADIES AND GENTS!” booms first AD Richard Graysmark through a microphone, and 307 teenage extras dance to ‘Happy House’ by Siouxsie and the Banshees as the drums kick in and strobe lights pulse. Their leaping and writhing on the dancefloor is lent a jerky, stop-motion quality by the staccato lighting, and their costumes glare impressively, with 230 of the 307 outfits designed by the extras themselves. Wright will later judge a competition for cash prizes, and his work will be cut out given the craftsmanship of the horns, skeletons and pumpkin-orange fright wigs on display.

Dressed rather more plainly and standing out from the crowd is 19-year old New Zealand actress Thomasin McKenzie of Leave No Trace, Jojo Rabbit and Old fame. She is playing shy Eloise, newly arrived in London from Cornwall to pursue her dream of becoming a fashionista. McKenzie wanders into the middle of the melee in a simple black dress, her kohl eyes peering from a whitened face. Behind her snakes the camera of Chung Chung-hoon, the genius DoP who lensed Andy Muschietti’s blockbuster adaptation of Stephen King’s It and Park Chan-wook classics Oldboy, Thirst and The Handmaiden. It’s hard not to think of the famous shot that circles Carrie White and Tommy Ross on the dancefloor in Brian De Palma’s