High-Rise

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Film

Welcome to condo-manium: Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s 1975 novel stars Tom Hiddleston as the upwardly mobile surgeon who has no idea what is store when he moves into his sleek new apartment building. We’re closer to Crash than Empire of the Sun, of course, but hotter than Hades in this scorching satire concerning class, hedonism and depravity, set in an imploding luxury apartment building.

Best known for his low-budget black comedies Kill List and Sightseers, as well as the trippy Civil War curio A Field in England, Wheatley is allowed to work on a grander scale here, with name actors (Tom Hiddleston, Sienna Miller and Jeremy Irons) and a production budget that dwarves his previous resources. He grabs the opportunity with both hands and, it must be said, throttles any notion that he might compromise his singularly unsentimental dog-eat-dog vision. This is an angry, ferocious but sickeningly funny movie about what happens when “society” is stripped away in the name of naked self-interest.

Imagine an adult Lord of the Flies cross-wired with the faulty towers in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and an even more apocalyptic class polemic than Snowpiercer… Throw in a string quartet cover version of ABBA’s 1975 hit “SOS,” an orgy or two and spice with dog meat. High-Rise: it’s a tour de force of astonishing geometrical precision and architectural ambition.

Places to go nearby approx. 15 minutes away