An energetic and engrossing psychological horror-cum-murder mystery with plenty of style to spare, Last Night in Soho finds filmmaker Edgar Wright at the peak of his powers in a film where naïve dreams and horrific nightmares emerge in time-crossing London.

“London is a bad place”. From Jack the Ripper to Dennis Nilsen, the UK’s capital has seen more than enough murder and bloodshed to drown its cobblestone streets. It is also a city in which momentous cultural milestones are peppered throughout its rich history, with the Swinging Sixties a central setting in Last Night in Soho, the latest film from Edgar Wright that explores the danger of nostalgia. While some yearn for the “good old days”, many tend to forget that even recent history is plagued with grizzly violence.

Learning this firsthand is Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), an aspiring fashion designer from Cornwell with an obsession for all things Sixties, the era of her late mother. Accepted into a prestigious fashion school in trendy Soho, London, Eloise settles into a retro flat within which at night she is mysteriously transported to the 1960s in the form of Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), a blonde bombshell with aspirations to make it as a singer, only to find herself ensnared in the corrupt world of ruthless pimp Harry (Matt Smith.)

The segues between reality and fantasy, present and past, are done incredibly well to tell a story where dreams, nightmares, madness, and misogyny take centre stage.

Last Night in Soho, in many ways, delves into the concept of how the veneer of an era often masks the grizzly realities that have been withered away over time. Eloise’s own obsession with the Sixties– its music, its fashion, and most important its connection to her late mother – is given a grizzly, violent, and insidious reality check. Thomasin McKenzie, one of the best young actors working today, does a terrific job expressing the wide-eyed naivety of a dreamer who finds herself out of her depth when the nightmares of the past invade her world.

The films set pieces – courtesy of production designer Marcu Rowland (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), supervising art director Tim Blake (Rocketman) and set decorator Jude Farr (The King’s Speech) – is captured wonderfully by cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung (Oldboy) and pops with style and vibrancy, once again certifying Wright’s standing as a director of style, substance, and infectious energy.