Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Last Night in Soho:
MaXXXine
MaXXXine has a handful of worthwhile moments, but the movie ultimately ricochets between two different sides of Ti West’s mind: the throwback B-movie auteur with a great taste for kills and the heady screenwriter with something to say about the industry he works in. It’s unfortunate that MaXXXine doesn’t strike that balance often, and it’s easy to tell when he’s switching from one gear to the next. Mia Goth reprises her scream queen role as the titular film star.
It’s What’s Inside
To its credit, It’s What’s Inside makes a few choices to make itself memorable. The premise is inarguably fascinating, and the consequences of the central plot engine are enticing at times. But It’s What’s Inside becomes frustratingly convoluted, compounded by a set of characters that I simply could not care less about.
Us
Jordan Peele’s Us was somewhat divisive when it hit theaters in 2019, but it has only grown in my estimation since. Not only did it prove that Get Out was no fluke, but it cemented Peele as a filmmaker with a knack for taking familiar horror tropes and twisting them into something fresh and conceptually bold. It’s a film that balances genre thrills with introspection, making for an experience that is as thought-provoking as it is unsettling.
Strange Darling
Strange Darling wears its influences on its sleeve. Director JT Mollner isn’t ashamed to let his inspirations be known as his latest thriller delivers twists and turns around every corner, and is told in a nonlinear fashion that makes it really hard not to think of a few classics. The likes of James Wan and Quentin Tarantino come to mind for these reasons, but Mollner’s Strange Darling doesn’t feel nearly as fresh as Saw or Pulp Fiction felt decades ago.
Smile
While Smile delivers on a couple creative and freaky scares, it ultimately falls apart with a prototypical first hour and a generally confusing second one. Sosie Bacon stars as a traumatized doctor looking for answers to her visions.
Weapons
Weapons opens with one of the most chilling hooks you’ll hear in any movie this year: at exactly 2:17 a.m., every child from Mrs. Gandy’s class woke up, walked downstairs, opened the front door, stepped into the dark… and never came back. It’s the kind of premise that immediately grabs you, the kind of logline that sells itself in a trailer and sticks in your head for days. Writer-director Zach Cregger, who burst onto the horror scene with 2022’s Barbarian, proves once again that he knows how to start a story with an irresistible, terrifying question.
Talk to Me
Talk to Me is the latest elevated horror movie from A24, a studio that’s completely redefined and reimagined the state of the genre, introducing new ideas and themes into it over the past decade. Talk to Me attempts to do the same, pitting trauma and coping mechanisms with demonic forces to a scary degree.
Barbarian
Zach Cregger‘s Barbarian is still refreshing and thrilling, and it’s easily one of my favorite theater experiences of 2022. Films try over and over again to use the schlocky marketing bit of audiences screaming in theaters only to be disappointing in actual terror when places in front of you – but Barbarian is genuinely jaw-dropping.
Longlegs
Longlegs makes good on the promise of being a freaky horror tale that injects dread in every frame and through every nook and cranny possible. Director Oz Perkins, if for nothing else, continues to prove himself as a singular horror director, with a style that no soul could replicate and a thirst for the absurd, demented, and disturbed. Maika Monroe and Blair Underwood offer enough to have you engaged, and Perkins is talented enough behind the camera to keep things rolling.
Don’t Worry Darling
While it’s easy to point fingers and blame the film’s issues on just a few individuals, Don’t Worry Darling, at its core, is flawed. A meandering story can’t be saved by Florence Pugh and Harry Styles.
