Review of High-Rise (2015) by Robert H — 09 May 2016

Maybe I went in with my expectations too high (mostly because of Tom Hiddleston), but after only really enjoying one of four films by Ben Wheatley so far, I'm beginning to think that maybe he isn't for me.

That's not to say that HIGH-RISE isn't well-crafted, because it is. I just found it hard to really engage with it on a deeper level than the audiovisual components, and some of the performances.

What really killed it for me, although there were a number of great moments to be had, was the slack pacing. It also didn't help that there wasn't any likeable characters to get behind other than Tom Hiddleston, who wasn't used as much I would have liked.

The premise is rather simple: a large group of well-to-do people who live in a skyscraper descend into anarchy when power and water run short. Basically, the thesis is that, given a lack of necessary resources, society will revert to their more primitive instincts, and this takes the form of class warfare.

Pretty accurate, if a little overdone by this point. J.G. Ballard's work has been successfully adapted before (although some might argue that point) with David Cronenberg's CRASH, but here the material didn't quite feel fresh, as social satires about class struggle have been done many times over.

Keeping the film set in a retro-futuristic 1970's was a nice touch that worked, given the universality of the themes, but it seemed more like a stylistic choice than one organic to the story being told.

The strongest elements the film were the production design, score, and the cinematography. All of these worked in tandem to give the effect of being slick and polished, with a detached "cool" factor that I liked.

There was even one sequence which could have been its own music video. Ultimately, though, I found my mind frequently drifting, waiting to be jolted out of my boredom, but that never really happened to my satisfaction.

HIGH-RISE isn't a bad movie, per se, but I will say that it wasn't for me.