Review of High-Rise (2015) by Lorna M — 28 Mar 2016

Spoilers from the get-go.

A very well made film that sticks pretty faithfully to the novel. In that regard it has some of the same issues that the novel had. In particular the setup is brilliant. You have mostly well-to-do people taking up residency in a new high rise building with the expectation of somehow living the high life. Then little-by-little things start to go wrong and at some point the building descends into savagery. However, the tipping point is quite difficult to pin-point and one could just imagine a society slowly descending into madness like the cliched frog in the pot of water brought to the boil. However, the difficulty for both the novel and the film is once the setup is complete, it's not clear where it can go. So both kind of just fizzle out with no real ending. So once the setup is complete you end-up with a bunch of disconnected scenes of barbarism. Which is a bit of a shame. There is also a sense that the director had in mind a few scenes but didn't really know where to fit them in, but loved them so much that he just couldn't let them be cut. We have Tom Hiddleston dancing with stewardesses on a high floor and Hiddleston again playing squash in a suit. Both are quite ascethetically pleasing but both are randomly inserted into the film. Overall, the film is not bad, but not must-see.