Microcosm of society in which you have complex archetypes of personality. Class warfare turns into dominance power fantasy in an isolated setting and the worst of humanity is unleashed as utopia becomes dystopia.
>Based director Ben Wheatley. >Based composer Clint Mansell [and Portishead reuniting for the first time in six years to put together a cover for this movie specifically]. >Based Jeremy Irons, Tom Hiddleston, Luke Evans, James Purefoy, Sienna Miller, etc. etc. >Excellent writing, based on a J.G. Ballard novel.
And capeshit gets good reviews and good box office (not that I even really dislike it, but come on).
As you say OP, it's a pretty standard movie with some cliched ideas which are, and this is the worst part, executed blandly. The movie plays it very very safe and it's shot in a very glossy way which makes it look like a perfume ad mixed with a music video (it even has a music video sequence with the SOS montage).
It's kind of a disheartening movie for me, it shows how you can take a provocative idea and neuter it by presenting it in a 'nice' way, and that's all because of the people involved. Ben Wheatley's only good film is, in my opinion, Kill List (I've seen all the others btw, not just talking shit), I think Amy Jump isn't a very good writer and as a creative team they don't work well, and it's clear the cinematographer mostly works in TV, commercial and low-budget world because there's no creativity or vision behind the camerawork.
This could have been a much better movie if someone else was in charge of it, ideally David Cronenberg (but he already this this movie, it's called Shivers) or, if they wanted a young director, Peter Strickland.
James Rogers
It's kino
Andrew Hughes
Thanks for the informative post. I also liked Kill List, but I haven't seen any other film by Wheatley. Maybe at some point I'll watch this movie.
Jace Lewis
it wants to be really bad
Landon Hill
If you do please also hunt down and watch Shivers. It's a similar plot structure but it's adapted, written, paced in a much better way. On top of that it also carries interesting social commentary relevant to the time it came out (1975) unlike High-Rise which feels very slight in its satire by comparison.
Elijah Evans
Sure. It's been a long time since I watched a film directed by Cronenberg, so I might just watch Shivers today or tomorrow.
Jaxon Perry
>Microcosm of society in which you have complex archetypes of personality. Class warfare turns into dominance power fantasy in an isolated setting and the worst of humanity is unleashed as utopia becomes dystopia.
Yeah we got that. Still boring though.
The entire film was vague as fuck. Didn't make any solid points at all
Logan Perry
It's too fucking long.
>inb4 ADHD pleb
Fuck off, it's a legitimate criticism. The last third of film is just repeating the same black comedy beats over and over again, the joke gets stale when you repeat it a hundred times. You could seriously cut ten minutes out and no one would have noticed.
Xavier Thomas
Literally none of your green text proves it's a good movie.
Bentley Collins
>proves it's a good movie excusez-moi?
Julian Perry
Book is infinitely better at describing the motivations of why they don't want to leave the building. Movie fails in that aspect and many other character related aspects in relation to the source material they had access to.
Critics who have also read the book mention this in there reviews quite a bit. Not everyone who rated it low did it because they "dont get it" or can't appreciate it, they just admit it was a valid attempt but ultimately did not live up to the expectations.
Brody Green
No every movie has to be GOAT or Shit
there's a middle ground
maybe it has issues.
Thomas Diaz
OP here. Reasonable point, and conceded.
I think I genuinely really enjoyed seeing a book I like made into an extended music video, as did my friends I went to see it with. Idk, I was probably too aggressive in trashing the dissenters but I was a big fan and felt it was very much underrated.
The style over substance argument is one I do have a hard time refuting though.
Ethan Collins
It glosses over the transition from order to chaos too quickly to rationalise it. The book paints a gradual transition, slow enough to make sense of what's happening and why, in the movie it all just goes to hell for unclear reasons.
Mainly though I think it's because it was marketed as scifi and it isn't scifi in the way that modern audiences understand scfi.
Thomas Diaz
>he already this this movie, it's called Shivers
Shivers is a fucking horror movie, it's nothing like this except that bad shit happens in an apartment building.
Christopher Jones
Oh shit, thanks OP!
I was talking to my homie the other day about the J.G. Ballard book. He recommended it passionately to me, and I damned near forgot about the shit.
I mean, I'm probably not gonna give the movie a shot
but fukken thanks dude
Camden Nelson
I enjoyed it but it felt like they cut out a few things.
Michael Foster
I thought it was weird that Laing basically becomes the main character of the story when it's really all about Wilder and Royal but Hiddleston did a really good job of it.
Also, question for people who've read the book, at the end when Wilder gets shanked by the roof women and the kids are sitting in the bloodsoaked garden playing with bones, is that supposed to imply that they've turned cannibal and eaten Pangbourne and the other men? I always thought so, but the ending to the movie presents such a different picture.
Logan Diaz
I didn't mean that it's style over substance, but rather that the style it chooses is at odds with the narrative. The glossy style makes sense at the beginning of the film when we're shown the apartments and parties with nice dolly shots, slides and fashion-like lighting, but when it's being done again in the second half it made me realize they just tried to make every shot look 'good' (in a traditional sense) which actually hurts the movie. Slo-mo steadicam shots following Hiddleston through the debauchery with cool Clint Mansell music on top isn't style over substance, it's more like style doing one thing while substance is in a different country.
Regardless of genre, think of the story beats, they are basically the same, even the ending is similar. Shivers gives more of a 'plot' explanation for the events while High-Rise gives more of a 'theme' explanation (parasites vs. social decay and class disparity). Also, the idea of a faction war is there in both (rich vs. middle class in highrise, infected vs. non-infected in Shivers) and you can easily apply a political interpretation to what's happening in Shivers if you want to (liberal vs. conservative mindset).
Gavin Butler
Sucks that you're literally incapable of enjoying it without shouting this stuff.
Colton Smith
I think it's sort of a 3-hander, where Wilder and Royal are the faction extremes and Hiddleston is always playing both sides and making no decisions. I think this is also indicated in a kind of crude visual metaphor with Wilder dressing in darker or stronger colors and Jeremy Irons in clean white suits, while Hiddles has a lot of medium gray clothing, ties, and eventually paints his apartment gray too. It's kind of a painfully boring visual metaphor i suppose.
Isaiah Robinson
Can you plebs stop using Rotten Tomatoes as your Bible that you can never have a different opinion from? It's really annoying.
