There are many who will be turned off by Wheatley and Jump’s coldly cruel take on Ballard’s vision, though few could deny that the retro-futuristic self-contained world they have conjured is a marvel.
High-Rise is a welcome, hallucinogenic-laced shot of adrenaline in the arm.
Batshit crazy. Don’t expect a thriller in the seat-edge sense, but you will be thrilled — and repulsed — by this bold, faithful adaptation of Ballard’s ever-prescient picture of First World strife.
Wheatley, Jump, Hiddleston and co occupy Ballard’s towering inferno with brazen style. If the plot wobbles precipitously, chalk it up to the high-rise ambition of a genuinely wayward Brit-film one-off.
The residents of a state-of-the-art tower block succumb to a collective breakdown in Ben Wheatley’s ingenious adaptation of the JG Ballard novel.
This, though, is visionary film-making, wildly ambitious, very caustic and hitting the bull's eye of almost every target in its sights.
Lord Of The Flies meets The Towering Inferno in a chilling, thought-provoking work that is definitely not for all tastes.
Ben Wheatley’s clever adaptation of JG Ballard’s ‘unfilmable’ book offers a creepy, future-retro vision of a society riven by wealth.
Despite its magnificent evocation of the mid-1970s, High-Rise is too messy and confusing to match its macabre source material.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
RSS feed of Cinema reviews