Screened as part of NZIFF 2016

High-Rise 2015

Directed by Ben Wheatley Incredibly Strange

In Ben Wheatley's ambitious, wildly disorienting adaptation of the J.G. Ballard novel, tenants of a high-tech skyscraper slip into a literal class war. Starring Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller and Elisabeth Moss.

UK In English
119 minutes CinemaScope / DCP

Rent

Director

Producer

Jeremy Thomas

Screenplay

Amy Jump. Based on the novel by J.G. Ballard

Photography

Laurie Rose

Editors

Amy Jump
,
Ben Wheatley

Production designer

Mark Tildesley

Costume designer

Odile Dicks-Mireaux

Music

Clint Mansell

With

Tom Hiddleston (Laing)
,
Jeremy Irons (Royal)
,
Sienna Miller (Charlotte)
,
Luke Evans (Wilder)
,
Elisabeth Moss (Helen)
,
James Purefoy (Pangbourne)
,
Keeley Hawes (Ann)
,
Peter Ferdinando (Cosgrove)
,
Sienna Guillory (Jane)
,
Reece Shearsmith (Steele)

Festivals

Toronto
,
San Sebastián
,
Fantastic Fest
,
London 2015; Tribeca
,
San Francisco 2016

Elsewhere

PRESENTED IN ASSOCIATION WITH

Flicks

“A savage and utterly brilliant satire of both 60s social idealism and the Thatcherite values that undermined it, High-Rise opens with a dishevelled man (the ever-sublime Tom Hiddleston) eating barbecued dog on the balcony of his trashed apartment, some 25 floors up. Director Ben Wheatley (Sightseers, Kill List) and regular collaborator and screenwriter Amy Jump tear into J.G. Ballard’s classic source novel with brutal gusto.

Hiddleston’s character, Dr Robert Laing, has just taken ownership of his luxurious apartment whose lofty location places him amongst the upper echelons. He is immediately drawn into and seduced by the louche culture of nightly cocktail parties, where conversation always comes back to Royal (Jeremy Irons in a pitch perfect performance that screams ‘empire in decline’), the enigmatic architect who designed the building. However, as power outages become more frequent and building flaws emerge, particularly on the lower floors, the regimented social strata begin to crumble. Nihilism, drugs and alcohol feed into wanton sex and destruction, all underscored by Clint Mansell’s wicked music and Mark Tildesley’s designs – revelling in decadent 70s chic.” — Tricia Tuttle, London Film Festival