‘High Rise’ Trailer: Tom Hiddleston Teases Luxury Living In A Most Ominous Way
Here’s theHigh Risetrailer from Studiocanal UK:
Just going by the footage in this teaser trailer, Ben Wheatley shot one hell of a beautiful movie. The shot composition and production design is just spectacular. But it also looks like this isn’t going to be the kind of film that Tom Hiddleston’s more mainstream fans will enjoy. It feels a lot like a David Cronenberg film, specifically his adaptation of Ballard’s novelCrash.
The film has received reviews all over the place, withTHRsaying:
Rarely have so many classy ingredients added up to such a muted, muddled, multi-story mess. Of course, it is still better to make an ambitious failure than a boring success. A true disaster movie, in all senses,High-Riseis ultimately an ambitious, brilliant failure.
So perhaps there are a lot of brilliant pieces here, but they just don’t quite come together. That perception isn’t surprising since many considered Ballard’s novel to be unfilmable. However, other critics loved the movie, withScott Weinberg at Nerdistsaying it “does a remarkable job of bringing a fascinating, difficult novel to the big screen.“Matt Donato at We Got This Coveredsays, “High Riseis artfully sophisticated madness — barbarism of the highest order, if you will. Wheatley has an eye for regal destruction, as we watch society crumble one floor at a time.”
You’re better off probably just seeing it for yourself. But if you’re not sure what the film is about after that vague, viral-esque teaser trailer, here’s the description from TIFF earlier this year:
The film follows a young, respectable doctor, Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston, also appearing at the Festival inI Saw the Light) who moves into a new luxury apartment seeking anonymity. The building, a Brutalist concrete tower block, is inhabited by eccentric tenants who let off steam in endless rounds of themed parties and raucous, drink-and-drug-fuelled orgies. Sitting literally atop this insular society is the high-rise’s architect and owner, Mr. Royal (Jeremy Irons), whose penthouse suite beggars description and has nothing to do with the rest of his design. As Robert settles into his new abode without ever really unpacking properly, the tower and its social complexities begin to take over his life.
Royal says he built the high-rise as “an agent for change,” but what Ballard and Wheatley both focus on is the class strife brewing between residents of the upper and lower floors. What starts out as competitive hijinks takes a turn toward tribalism and anarchy as the whole edifice begins to rot from within.
