05 July 2016

High-Rise (Ben Wheatley, 2015)

7.5/10
I didn't realize going in this was an adaptation of a J.G. Ballard book, but knowing that at the end, it makes sense. The movie starts out very stylishly and very mysteriously. I wouldn't say I liked it less as it went on, but there is a certain sense of "...oh" when the central themes start to emerge and they're quite a bit less mysterious or innovative as you thought they would be at the start of the movie. That's a horrible sentence, does it make any sense? In the first act of the film I was dazzled with reminisces of Terry Gilliam and Stanley Kubrick and by the end of the film I was drawing parallels to the kinda-clunky-but-also-very-showy Snowpiercer from a few years ago. Ben Wheatley has all kinds of talent (see his last one A Field in England if you haven't) and he's really good at holding my attention. I like that he's getting high profile work and even if I didn't love this one I'll be paying attention to what comes next.

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