The latest Edgar Wright film, the thriller Last Night in Soho, cost $43 million to make and has earned about $4 million so far. That’s well below expectations, especially considering what a hit his last commercial feature, Baby Driver (2017), was, and how well his Sparks Brothers (2021) did on the arthouse documentary circuit. If you also consider his beloved trilogy comprised of Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), and The World’s End (2013), it seems as if Wright’s had a pretty charmed directorial career as far as popularity, other than Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) — and now Last Night in Soho.

But he can’t say he didn’t ask for this flop. After a scintillating opening, Last Night in Soho goes into a hysterical tailspin that leaves you wondering what exactly Wright’s trying to do. Mixing genres is all very well, but there needs to be some clarity. If he wants to make a horror film, he has to make it clearer that that’s what he’s actually doing. If he wants to make a musical — and he seems to be headed that way since Baby Driver — he needs to commit himself. And if he wants to make an all-out, lurid, mind-blowing melodrama, he’s in the wrong era altogether, and he needs to time travel back to the 1950s, which is even earlier that the 1966 “Swinging London” period when Soho is partially set.

It’s too bad, really. There’s a lot of great talent in this film. Anya Taylor-Joy — playing Sandy, the ghostly knockout London chick in fabulous mid-1960s minidress and white vinyl raincoat who haunts shy, maladjusted present-day fashion student Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) — continues to demonstrate her startling charisma. Among other things, she’s played the lead role in The Witch (2015), the title character in Jane Austen’s Emma. (2020), and the emotionally damaged chess prodigy in the hit miniseries The Queen’s Gambit (2020). Next up, she’ll play the lead in Furiosa, the prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).