High-Rise
Short description
Dr. Robert Laing moves into a newly built apartment tower on the edge of London, hoping for a quiet life after his divorce. The high-rise is designed as a self-contained world, with schools, shops, a pool and a gym spread across its floors, and its residents arranged according to status: the architect Anthony Royal occupies the penthouse, while families lower down have fewer privileges. Laing settles into a flat in the middle and is drawn into the social life of his neighbours, including the television journalist Richard Wilder and Charlotte Melville. Tensions between the upper and lower floors gradually intensify, and the building's services begin to fail, until the ordered community turns on itself.
Ben Wheatley directed the film, his fifth feature after Down Terrace, Kill List, Sightseers and The ABCs of Death, from a screenplay by Amy Jump. It is adapted from J. G. Ballard's novel and stars Tom Hiddleston as Laing, alongside Elisabeth Moss, Sienna Miller, Jeremy Irons, Luke Evans and Reece Shearsmith. Jeremy Thomas produced, and the film was made in Belgium, the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland.
Released in 2015, the film earned about 4 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 5.5 out of 10 from roughly 47,000 votes, and on TMDB 5.6 out of 10 from about 1,300 votes. A critics' rating of 6.5 out of 10 from 224 reviews places its reception slightly above the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Vincenzo Natali or Nicholas Roeg could have directed the film.
- Tom Hiddleston spent some time with forensic scientists to prepare for his role, as his character, Dr. Robert Lang, is a physiologist by profession.
- The film was a stalled project for many decades, obsessing producer Jeremy Thomas.
- Elizabeth Moss says that the most difficult thing for her in preparing for the filming was learning to speak with a convincing British accent, as she herself is American.
- The film was shot almost forty years after the release of the novel of the same name by J.G. Ballard in 1975.
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