HIGH-RISE

"Seizing on the delightfully oxymoronic possibilities of an apocalyptic period film … this is Wheatly unleashed." – Cinema Scope

An adaptation of JG Ballard's brutally subversive 1975 classic, High-Rise finds acclaimed British director and MIFF favourite Ben Wheatley (A Field in England, MIFF 2013; Sightseers, MIFF 2012) unshackled from the low-budget restraints of his past and let loose on the Titanic of skyscrapers.

Tom Hiddleston is suavely sanguine as protagonist Dr Robert Laing, a physiologist who moves into a sleek apartment block designed, by Jeremy Irons' architect Anthony Royal, to cater to its residents' every physical need. But as the building's physical services fail – the electricity goes out; the lifts stop working; food shortages abound – its social structures melt and the world within the high-rise nosedives into a free-for-all class war.

Faithfully bringing Ballard's grown-up Lord of the Flies to the screen in a visual spectacular – regular Wheatley cinematographer Laurie Rose has outdone herself – Wheatley and his regular screenwriter Amy Jump revel in the mayhem unleashed as the tower's inhabitants (also including Elisabeth Moss, Luke Evans and Sienna Miller) succumb to a Pandora's box of human debauchery. With Clint Mansell's score magnifying the destruction, High-Rise is a gloriously unhinged work of blackly comic dystopian surrealism.

"The kind of cinematic madness we desperately need … High-Rise is a welcome, hallucinogenic-laced shot of adrenaline in the arm." – The Independent

Find the book at Readings.