High-Rise

High-Rise may not be the greatest Ballard adaptation ever made, but it doesn't have to be: it stands on its own as a masterclass of the substance of style, and how stories told long ago can have often eerie, direct parallels in the future.

High-Rise is just about the looniest garbage I have seen in a long while.

In High-Rise the fitfully brilliant Briton Ben Wheatley, with writing partner Amy Jump, seizes what seems a perfect-fitting text -- JG Ballard's dystopian novel High-Rise -- and makes an omnishambles of it.

It's a very British subject, this obsession with class differences and class warfare, but Wheatley's compelling handling of the material -- though criticised in some quarters for its deliberately alienating elements -- seems on the mark.

Collet-Serra seems as transfixed by the landscape as he is by Lively's presence, suggesting a continuity between humanity and the natural world.

It's meant to leave a bad taste and it does. High-Rise is an effective adaptation of a classic dystopian novel that no longer seems like science fiction.

The layers of symbolism, analogy, and allegory are as tall as the building itself. There is a richly disturbing and dark fascination in observing how all of this frivolity comes crashing down in unpredictable and unlimited disaster.

We’re so removed from the physicality of the violence that little of it is felt, and so the muck is only set dressing.

The experience cannot be described as enjoyable; however, many may come to appreciate the anarchy's commentary with distant admiration.

Has no room for subtlety. But it has plenty of style and substance.