20 Horror Movies That Fall Apart In The Final Act

Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho is visually exquisite and excellently performed, but the script needed a rewrite or two. In stark contrast to the ingenious writing of the Cornetto Trilogy, this screenplay had multiple issues, the most prominent one being a misjudged final act that upends the story and contradicts its themes, too.

In this one, fashion student Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie) starts having visions of Sandy (Anya Taylor-Joy), an aspiring model in 1960s London who was forced into prostitution and then murdered by an abusive club manager named Jack (Matt Smith). 

A slowly unravelling Ellie tries to find Jack and avenge Sandy. At first, Jack appears to be a regular in the pub Ellie works in (played by the late, great Terence Stamp), but as we only learn at the end, this was all a massive red herring. In fact, Ellie's seemingly harmless landlady Ms. Collins (Diana Rigg, another late British great) is Sandy, and she killed Jack, not the other way around. She's been killing other men who abused her for years. 

This is one of those twists that gets worse and worse the more you think about it. It is an effective shock during the first viewing, but it also breaks the story by raising too many questions. Namely, why did Ellie's visions lie to her? It also undermines what was previously a story that condemned misogyny by turning Sandy into a villainous serial killer who tries to murder the innocent Ellie at the end.