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High-Rise

  • 2015
  • R
  • 1h 59m
IMDb RATING
5.5/10
47K
YOUR RATING
Jeremy Irons, Elisabeth Moss, Sienna Guillory, James Purefoy, Tom Hiddleston, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, and Louis Suc in High-Rise (2015)
1975. Two miles west of London, Dr. Robert Laing moves into his new apartment seeking soulless anonymity, only to find that the building's residents have no intention of leaving him alone. Resigned to the complex social dynamics unfolding around him, Laing bites the bullet and becomes neighborly. As he struggles to establish his position, Laing's good manners and sanity disintegrate along with the building. The lights go out and the lifts fail but the party goes on. People are the problem. Booze is the currency. Sex is the panacea. Only much later, as he sits on his balcony eating the architect's dog, does Dr. Robert Laing finally feel at home ...
Play trailer1:16
5 Videos
99+ Photos
Dark ComedyDramaSci-Fi

Life for the residents of a tower block begins to run out of control.Life for the residents of a tower block begins to run out of control.Life for the residents of a tower block begins to run out of control.

  • Director
    • Ben Wheatley
  • Writers
    • Amy Jump
    • J.G. Ballard
  • Stars
    • Tom Hiddleston
    • Jeremy Irons
    • Sienna Miller
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    5.5/10
    47K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Ben Wheatley
    • Writers
      • Amy Jump
      • J.G. Ballard
    • Stars
      • Tom Hiddleston
      • Jeremy Irons
      • Sienna Miller
    • 270User reviews
    • 343Critic reviews
    • 65Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 6 wins & 14 nominations total

    Videos5

    International Teaser Trailer
    Trailer 1:16
    International Teaser Trailer
    High-Rise U.S. Trailer
    Trailer 2:20
    High-Rise U.S. Trailer
    High-Rise U.S. Trailer
    Trailer 2:20
    High-Rise U.S. Trailer
    High-Rise
    Clip 1:14
    High-Rise
    High-Rise
    Clip 1:48
    High-Rise
    Ever wanted something more? Join us at the High-Rise.
    Featurette 1:22
    Ever wanted something more? Join us at the High-Rise.

    Photos306

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    Top cast54

    Edit
    Tom Hiddleston
    Tom Hiddleston
    • Laing
    Jeremy Irons
    Jeremy Irons
    • Royal
    Sienna Miller
    Sienna Miller
    • Charlotte
    Luke Evans
    Luke Evans
    • Wilder
    Elisabeth Moss
    Elisabeth Moss
    • Helen
    James Purefoy
    James Purefoy
    • Pangbourne
    Keeley Hawes
    Keeley Hawes
    • Ann
    Peter Ferdinando
    Peter Ferdinando
    • Cosgrove
    Sienna Guillory
    Sienna Guillory
    • Jane
    Reece Shearsmith
    Reece Shearsmith
    • Steele
    Enzo Cilenti
    Enzo Cilenti
    • Talbot
    Augustus Prew
    Augustus Prew
    • Munrow
    Dan Renton Skinner
    Dan Renton Skinner
    • Simmons
    • (as Dan Skinner)
    Stacy Martin
    Stacy Martin
    • Fay
    Tony Way
    Tony Way
    • Robert the Caretaker
    Leila Mimmack
    Leila Mimmack
    • Laura
    Bill Paterson
    Bill Paterson
    • Mercer
    Louis Suc
    Louis Suc
    • Toby
    • Director
      • Ben Wheatley
    • Writers
      • Amy Jump
      • J.G. Ballard
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews270

    5.546.7K
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    Featured reviews

    6abouhelier-r

    High-Rise

    Life for the residents of a tower begins to run out of control.

    High-Rise is the adaptation of J.G. Ballard's 1975 novel, directed by Ben Wheatley and starring Tom Hiddleston as Dr. Robert Laing. I didn't really know what to expect from this movie, as I did not read the book, so I came at it from a fresh perspective. This film is a quasi-period piece, which is not completely irrelevant to a Britain in which buy-to-let apartment block exist. It is a blank, affectless world with a certain type of sci-fi and satirical Englishness. This tale is quite a bizarre, sleek, seedy and mad spectacle.

    If Jeremy Iron's roles in Dead Ringer and M.Butterfly provide a roundabout link to Cronenberg, so does a med-school scene where the skin of a cadaver's head is peeled away in a kind of metaphor for society's thin surface. That and his wife parading around like some postmodern Marie Antoinette, on a horse. In fact, the core cast is brilliant. Tom Hiddleston is terrifically nonchalant, giving a great performance as the lead character: dry and self-possessed. A charming and charismatic performance with a hint of internal sadness. Plus, Miller makes bright work of Charlotte.

    Mark Tildesley's lavish production design ranges from mouldering fruit bowls to posh parties decadent enough to cause a French Revolution. Decadence, despair and violence are all around, in a kind of ongoing erotic catastrophe. The screenwriters played out this scenario as a retro-futuristic sci-fi allegory - Ballard was writing the near-future in the mid-70s: Wheatley and Jump smartly stick with a period they know well. I loved the film's refusal of "normal" storytelling, bold visual style with these gorgeous shots and vibrant colours. Combined with the editing, shots have a dream- like surreal quality, a colourful beginning contrasted by the end with a dark shadow feeling.

    The soundtrack was great, there is two scenes especially where there's this string quartet playing an ABBA song and later on it gets remix, it was probably one of my favourite scenes - as well as this very interesting naked scene on the balcony that might also be of some interest to some of you. Finally, for some High-Rise could be frustrating and the specific references to Margaret Thatcher era doesn't quite work as a whole.

    Overall, High-Rise has a vibe of "you want to look away but you really can't". This film is an excellent allegory for society, it lingers in the mind with some strong visuals, good soundtrack and more than decent acting.
    kinoreview

    High-Rise's allegory of class divide gets lost in a dull montage of blood, sweat and blue paint

    Ben Wheatley is one of the most exciting British directors working today. His two best films are Kill List, a deeply disturbing horror/thriller about a tormented contract killer, and Sightseers, a black comedy about a troubled couple on their parochial, psychopathic honeymoon.

    Key to these films' success are strong characters with interesting dynamics. Kill List begins almost like a domestic kitchen-sink drama centred on the failing relationship between Jay (Neil Maskell) and Shel (MyAnna Burning), but it subsequently evolves, or rather devolves, into something dark, dank and horrible in a most unpredictable manner. Sightseers may be most commonly remembered for its scenes of outlandish violence, such as when Chris (Steve Oram) deliberately runs over a litterer in a fit of righteous anger. However, underneath the comic outbursts of gore is the poignant relationship between Chris and Tina (Alice Lowe), an oddball pair with a past of loneliness and insecurity.

    Having proved himself as a director of visceral horror and emotional substance, Ben Wheatley is the natural choice to direct J. G. Ballard's High-Rise, a Goldingesque tale of violent class war exploding within a brutalist tower block. The fragility of civilisation, and the primitive savagery that lurks beneath it, is a darkly fascinating subject that has made for excellent films and books, such as Threads, a devastating vision of post- apocalyptic Britain, and William Golding's Lord of the Flies, which needs no introduction.

    High-Rise does not brush shoulders with such works, for its allegory of class divide gets lost in a dull montage of blood, sweat and blue paint. Oh, and dancing air hostesses, for reasons that are, to put it politely, enigmatic.

    The focal characters - Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston), a measured, middle class doctor; Charlotte Melville (Sienna Miller), a sultry woman who serves as Laing's gateway in to upper floors' high culture; Richard Wilder (Luke Evans), a pugnaciously aspirational documentary maker; and Anthony Royal (Jeremy Irons), the patrician architect who designed the building - are introduced well enough, but ultimately do not receive sufficient development.

    As the lead and perhaps most relatable character, we are in the body of Laing when he traverses the tower's social scene, which he admits to 'not being very good at'. Some may find him steely, but Laing has an affable reserve and high emotional intelligence. He isn't particularly interested in the petty one-upmanship that comes with climbing the social ladder, but he manages to deftly negotiate it anyway through his insouciant reserve that maintains peoples' interest and disarms any potential enemies. Hiddleston, one of Britain's hottest exports, is well cast here, he delivers the best performance of the film.

    However, after a competent introduction to society in the high rise, Laing and the others get lost in an incoherent narrative that favours aesthetics and absurdity over credible character interplay. It begins three months ahead of the main events, showing a blood spattered Laing roasting a dog's leg over a fire surrounded by dirt and detritus. After the introductory period of around thirty minutes, the film then charts what led to this repellent spectacle with a disjointed series of set pieces that give little sense of progression.

    Electrical problems are plaguing the building and resentment is brewing between the upper and lower floors, but the descent into nihilism just happens. Dogs are being drowned, Laing's painting his apartment (and himself) like a total madman and the whole building becomes a rubbish-strewn nightmare - but there's no tension, no crescendo, no credibility and, curiously, no one who considers leaving! The worsening relations should have been more gradual and given much greater depth and meaning by the characters, their dialogue and their relationships. Instead, the main character covers himself in paint to communicate his increasingly aberrant state of mind, which appears to be an obvious metaphor for tribal decorations.

    High-Rise fails as a film about primal savagery and particularly as a film about class. In Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine, I cringed as Jasmine and her husband Hal, arrogant members of New York high society, barely contained their raging superiority complexes as they awkwardly condescended to Ginger (Jasmine's sister) and Augie, a decidedly blue collar couple who wonder at Hal and Jasmine's luxurious home. No such realist interplay is to be found in High-Rise, because its characters are thinly drawn and it isn't rooted in reality, which is very much to its detriment.

    Towards the film's end, there are moments in which Royal and his minions discuss the politics and future of the tower, with Royal remarking that the lower floors should be 'Balkanised', meaning that they should be fragmented and pitted against each other in a manner reminiscent of the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. I liked the use of that phrase, there should have been a lot more of this in the script, more overt political manoeuvring rather than surrealist claptrap and brutalist 70s chic.

    Alas, Wheatley's High-Rise is more concerned with aesthetics and the 1970s, which means there's more in the way of shag-pile carpets, dodgy hair and the colour brown than developed characters, coherent narrative structure and sociopolitical substance.
    4steven-drew

    Mish Mash

    You look at the cast . 10/10 You see the story line 09/10 You see the cinematography 09/10

    We settle down , C,mon movie "entertain us" we cry.

    1 hour later we just cry.

    The morning after watching we are still "none the wiser" which is a great shame.

    Very well made with a cast of most of my favourite Brit actors but what the hell is it all about ???? I still haven't got a clue.

    Pretentious , Brit film Noir? my biggest regret is we wasted a Saturday night watching it.

    My wife kept saying , "turn it off if you don't like it" but we kept thinking it would either 1) get better 2) we would eventually Get It or 3) We watched it this far so there is no point switching it off now.
    6joebloggscity

    Tom Hiddleston in Kafa-esque nightmare....

    This isn't one film to take at face value. Very subversive, the film begins with our familiar face of Tom Hiddleston covered in blood in some apartment flat! We then rewind to 3 months back to explain what has happened. Based in some 1970s high-rise block (very 2000AD style), this building was designed as a utopia with the wealthiest settling in the top flats. Instead it turns in a dystopia, as the residents are stuck in some narcissistic and parochial void.

    Civil & class war is breaking out and nothing is clear cut. Tom Hiddleston's character though is dressed and fitted as if he is from 20-30 years later, so it's too obvious a way for us to relate to him. Anyhow, he has to survive in this world, but gets sucked in.

    This film reminded me of some 'horror' videos from the 1990's, wasn't uncommon in those days (films like 'Society' etc), and it was an interesting change. We have a very surreal look here in this film, and it's clichéd in style & outlook for the 1970's (which reflects the vanity of the residents).

    Despite the originality, it didn't work for me. It's probably 30mins too long and that saps the interest out of it as they stretched the film. Too often you can't follow what is going on. You never empathise with anyone in this film as they try to live in their own vacuous worlds.

    It's an interesting film but it definitely will only appeal to a minority, as I guess it was always going to looking at the premise. A minor cult film? Possibly. Won't be one I'll revisit.
    Gordon-11

    A pointless and confusing mess

    This film tells the life of the residents in a high rise apartment block in the UK, where the hierarchy and the corresponding rights of the residents are highly rigid.

    "High-Rise" is certainly trying to be a metaphor for a dysfunctional society, but exactly what it is trying to mirror, I don't know. The plot is very confusing, and basically the lives of the residents and also the plot itself descend into chaos. Maybe it's trying to tell the relationship between the oppressors and the oppressed? Or is it trying to highlight the importance of elitism, and that the masses should not have power? The central theme of the film is so unclear, that I could not get into the story at all. I find it a pointless and confusing mess.

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The film includes two interpretations of the ABBA song "SOS" - one by the film's composer Clint Mansell and the other by Portishead. "SOS" was released in 1975. The same year as the novel "High-Rise" JG Ballard.
    • Goofs
      When Laing cuts into the human head during the pathology / dissection scene, blood is shown flowing from the fresh incision. This is medically impossible, as blood ceases to flow once a person is deceased; even more so when the head has been long since detached from the rest of the body.
    • Quotes

      Ann: There's no food left. Only the dogs. And Mrs. Hillman is refusing to clean unless I pay her what I apparently owe her. Like all poor people, she's obsessed with money.

    • Connections
      Featured in Film '72: Episode #45.4 (2016)
    • Soundtracks
      Sundance Chant
      Written by Conny Velt

      Published by Neue Welt Musikverlag GMBH & Co. KG

      A Warner / Chappell Music Company

      Performed by Gila

      Licensed courtesy of Gila

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    FAQ

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • April 28, 2016 (United States)
    • Countries of origin
      • United Kingdom
      • Belgium
    • Official sites
      • Official site
      • Official site (Japan)
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • El rascacielos
    • Filming locations
      • Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland, UK
    • Production companies
      • HanWay Films
      • Film4
      • British Film Institute (BFI)
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $346,472
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $79,887
      • May 15, 2016
    • Gross worldwide
      • $4,289,074
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 59 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.35 : 1

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    Jeremy Irons, Elisabeth Moss, Sienna Guillory, James Purefoy, Tom Hiddleston, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, and Louis Suc in High-Rise (2015)
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