High-Rise

Like Wheatley’s 2011 film "Kill List," High-Rise switches genres effortlessly – black humour one moment, dystopic parable the next – until it becomes its own singular, horrifying, immensely captivating thing.

On the whole, High-Rise hits more often than it misses. It’s a playfully demented and dry evisceration of the tenuous hold that modern western civilization has on civility, walking a fine line between the best genre horror and the loftiest of intellectual indie cinema.

Wheatley's past films —€” the dark comedy Sightseers, the genre-defying slasher Kill List, the weird black-and-white micro-project A Field In England —€” come together in this film, which is crazed and violent, strange and appalling, image-driven and a moral lesson, and just plain strange. But Hiddleston's combination of placid calm and seething, hidden rage gives it all an anchor.

Director Ben Wheatley (“Kill List”) is masterful with arresting imagery set in a dystopian spin on the ’70s; less so with a compelling narrative.

There are certain movies that you really want to like based on their ambition, or their weirdness, or their ambitious weirdness, and ultimately you just can’t. Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise is one of those movies.

Ben Wheatley's muddled adaptation of the dystopian 1975 novel High-Rise — one of many Ballard books that examine the pathologizing effects of modern technology and convenience — suffers from being both too literal and too obtuse in its alterations.

A trash wallow in sex, nudity, violence, cruelty to animals and the skewering of contemporary society, it will predictably appeal to kids and art house patrons who crave the cinematic roller coaster rides of outrage and chaos that lead to downright anarchy. Saner, more rational minds are advised to look elsewhere.

This movie is nuts and I didn't buy everything that happened. Not all of its points are driven home like it intends them to be and it rambles unconvincingly for a while after the half (no idea what the end meant other than representing the sick masculine dream of what constitutes "winning"). However, taken as a hyperbolic nightmare allegory it has its moments and an energy all its own.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

High-Rise is an insane movie, but it manages to present J. G. Ballard's metaphor of society's obsession with hierarchy and capitalist voraciousness in a slick package, featuring a very slick performance from Tom Hiddleston. Sadly, I think the plot was partially obscured by the sheer madness that ensued onscreen...

In our modern world--where many people live in high-rise apartments without resorting to barbarism--this story doesn't really make any sense. It was the most poorly designed and managed building I've ever seen, and none of the characters behave like human beings.

Why don't they just leave? High-Rise touches on similar topics to Snowpiercer from 2014, namely in regards to themes of social class, social unrest, and the economy. However, it makes no sense. While this building most certainly is a living, breathing entity, these people are workers who just stop going to work when things start happening in their building. When the violence, civil war, and orgies start happening, I just could not comprehend why everyone did not just walk out and move to a new building? While the acting across the board is solid, the thematic elements certainly needed a lot of work as director Ben Wheatley seemed to just toss the kitchen sink at the screen and thought it would all make sense. I get what he was attempting to accomplish with this film and what statements he was trying to make. However, the method in which he used to attack the problems were scattershot at best and ill-thought out. That said, the shots in the elevator are really, really cool and incredibly shot and designed. Honestly, those will be some of my favorite shots of 2016 without a doubt. That said, High-Rise is a pretty disaster with good acting, but obvious thematic dealings and a truly odd, reckless plot undermines the entire proceeding.