Director: Ben Wheatley.
Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, James Purefoy, Elisabeth Moss.
I went into this film knowing nothing about it. No trailers, no IMDb, no reviews apart from the digital posters displayed on my Flixster app; which incidentally has a 95% rating next to it. Now having left the cinema, I actually still know little about High-Rise apart from its set in an oddly shaped tower block in the mid 70s and I can only imagine is a bizarre analogy on modern, western social circles and its aristocracy; like a surreal, perverted Animal Farm (Orwell's novel of course). The characters are totally outrageous as each of them represents someone different from the social hierarchy. It's an all star cast which the majority of is British flavoured but I think Luke Evans out done them all being the "sanest in the building". Made me think he would make a good British Wolverine. Hiddleston just reminds me of Michael Fassbender, they have that same look about them, especially when somethings going down. It escalates quickly into brutal chaos jumping from scene to scene, floor to floor to the background of classic music and to what I say is an amazing rendition of Abba's SOS, both Strings and vocal versions. It's the kind of violence that reminds me of A Clockwork Orange and it tackles many taboos. One taboo that stands out is the bad smoking habits. High-Rise probably contains more smoking scenes than the whole of the 80s cut to together. I suppose this type of film is open to as much debate like abstract art is to being real art. Reading many reviews as "visually beautiful, funny" and even "genius" but for me, it was none of those. Arty yes, but my sense of visual beauty is Fury Road and Sicario, it was more like Bronson. There's a couple of sniggers of comedy but it's far from funny and I have no idea about it being a work of genius; maybe it's too smart for me to understand. It obviously has a political, social message in there somewhere but my head had been visually bashed by the time it concluded with me wanting it to end. I spent most of the film wondering what was actually happening and where it was going.
Running Time: 4
The Cast: 8
Performance: 8
Direction: 3
Story: 3
Script: 4
Creativity: 4
Soundtrack: 5
Job Description: 1
The Extra Bonus Point: 3 for the Abba covers and Luke Evans.
43% 4/10
