Edgar Wright plays around with time, color, and reality in first groovy trailer for 'Last Night in Soho'

Writer/director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) is at his most surreal with the first trailer for Last Night in Soho. The time-turning psychological thriller stars Thomasin McKenzie (Jojo Rabbit, Old) as Eloise, a young woman in 21st century Britain with a passion for fashion design.

Longing to be a part of London's groovy scene of the 1960s, Eloise mysteriously travels to the past after encountering/merging with her idol, a wannabe singer, played by Anya Taylor-Joy (The New Mutants). You can feel a palpable sense of wonder as Eloise takes in a bright theater marquee advertising Sean Connery's fourth James Bond film, Thunderball. However, '60s-era London is not what it appears to be when time starts to fray at the seams with horrific consequences. Similar to Midnight in Paris, the film speaks to anyone who feels as though they were born in the wrong decade. Of course, getting what you wish for isn't always what it's cracked up to be.

"There’s something I have in common with the lead character in that I’m afflicted with nostalgia for a decade I didn’t live in,” Wright said in October 2019. “You think about ‘60s London — what would that be like? And the reality of the decade is maybe not what she imagines. It has an element of ‘be careful what you wish for’."

Allow Taylor-Joy to serenade you with a soothing (yet skin-crawling) rendition of Petula Clark's 1964 hit, "Downtown," in the trailer below:

Through its dynamic use of color, Soho looks to be an homage to the influential giallo (aka Italian horror) flicks of the 1960s and '70s.

“It will feel very different to my other films,” Wright teased to Empire Magazine last fall. “But I’ve always liked films which have a slow burn into something else, and a lot of my movies have that feeling. Last Night starts in a more psychological realm and then starts to get increasingly intense as it goes along. And I always like to gravitate towards making a film in genres I miss, and there’s a certain type of psychological horror film that you got more in the ‘60s and ‘70s, that have something of an operatic nature. I’m using that kind of visual grammar."

Matt Smith (House of the Dragon), Diana Rigg (Game of Thrones), Terence Stamp (Murder Mystery), Rita Tushingham (Ridley Road), Michael Ajao (Attack the Block), and Synnøve Karlsen (Medici) comprise the rest of the happenin' cast.

Co-written by Wright and Krysty Wilson-Cairns (1917), Last Night in Soho opens in theaters this October. Keep the party going with the poster and a collection of psychedelic production stills in the gallery below...