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High-Rise
Stars: Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss, Keeley Hawes, James Purefoy, Sienna Guillory
Director: Ben Wheatley
A crazy, bloodsoaked surrealist comedy-drama. driven on by a very busy music score, and bound to divide critical opinion, this is set in the title building, an ultra-modern 30-storey block of flats whose architect (Irons) lives by a huge Hampton Court-style garden on the roof, around which his distant younger wife (Hawes) rides on a white horse (not in the nude: all that comes later).
New to the block in Room 2505 is Dr Laing (Hiddleston), a hedonist who finds himself well at home in the overheated surrounds of the high-rise (there's a lot of vigorous bonking in this movie as well as the liberal letting of blood).
The tower block itself is like something out of Metropolis: the rich and quasi-famous, all exaggerated caricatures, live on the upper floors, while the lesser beings, who pay the same rent, live down below.
The film probably owes something to the darker work of Luis Buñuel, but not in a good way: it's ridiculous rather than sublime, and every bit as revolting as those folk from the lower floors.
David Quinlan
UK 2015. UK Distributor: StudioCanal. Colour.
115 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.
Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 3, Violence/Horror 2, Drugs 1, Swearing 2.
Review date: 14 Jul 2016