High-Rise
Life for the residents of a tower block begins to run out of control.
Cast
Tom Hiddleston – Dr. Robert Laing
Sienna Miller – Charlotte Melville
Jeremy Irons – Anthony Royal
Luke Evans – Richard Wilder
Elisabeth Moss – Helen Wilder
James Purefoy – Pangbourne
Keeley Hawes – Ann Royal
The Walkout Awards
…and the award for most people walking out of a movie before it had even finished, goes to!…
Three people from up the back.
A female couple to my left, who clearly had better things to do.
One man somewhere down in the front.
The others who exited the auditorium.
That’s right. This happened. And I write about this with absolutely no exaggeration; I have never seen such a high number of people leave the cinema during a movie. I personally do not know how I made it to the end myself, I found High-Rise unbearable. Sickening. Unnecessarily graphic. I saw this movie with a friend and even he couldn’t believe the amount of displeased viewers. When we both made it to the end credits and got up very quickly, I turned and glanced at a very old couple behind me; they were slumped in their seats with glazed faces.
I’d had enough. I had to get out of there..
High-Rise is sick. I’m sure in the producer’s mind he thought he was taking a simple concept and minimal setting and staging something where symbolic meaning radiated from every object or person in the room. One of those over-enthused chaps who produces a feature which, “doesn’t have to mean anything. It is the viewers own interpretation of life”. And perhaps some viewers did interpret Dr. Robert Laing (Hiddleston) slowly rotating the bloody, severed limb of a dog over a small fire as portraying the struggles of the daily grind, etc. but for me – it was just disgusting and completely unnecessary. And it didn’t stop there; people’s faces are torn from their skull, hard fucking takes place atop a garden table in front of a small child and his babysitter, drug-taking scenes aren’t just graphic – it’s as though someone stuck a camera inside one of the actor’s nostrils.
But above all, High-Rise is just plain weird. And not in a good way. Nauseatingly colourful apartments give way to scenes involving bland characters who seem to go about their daily lives as though the audience are going to care. In all honesty, I wasn’t drawn to any of these people at all. They were all plain, irrelevant. Just happened to be on screen to support Hiddleston as he played out various scenes. And the number of backing extras didn’t help either as the screen became messy, full to bursting during certain scenes.
There has to be something I like about this movie. Anything..
Trip
..nope. Nothing.
Very rarely do I watch a movie and despise everything about it. The cast and set, the story, the action and entertainment value. But here we are. The rough shagging, limb chopping, dog eating, drug taking, random wall painting halfway through it all.. none of this appealed to me in the slightest.
A word of warning for the recreational drug user: DO NOT be watching High-Rise when doing so. I can’t imagine the sort of trip a person would experience when faced with this movie whilst ‘playing’ with mushrooms or something.
Psychedelic patterns and colours make up at least 40% of this movie, and mixed with the grotesque activities and crazed personalities.. holy shit, you would be screwed. There is a lot of dark-room style activity too, with Hiddleston and his fellow actors grinning madly as their faces are lit with red light, etc. This movie bursts into slo-mo dance routines at random intervals too – which widened my eyes even more as I sat wondering what the point of it all was. I did turn to my friend Ben a few times to moan, but he seemed too distracted by the amount of people walking out of the cinema. He did offer a vaid point about the movie though:
“he (Laing) still manages to go to work”.
Good point.
High-Rise portrays its residents as being in their apartment block 24/7. Very little of the outside world is shown as 95% of the action takes place in the residences of various characters. The supermarket, swimming pool and gym, it’s all in the high-rise block. They more than stand their ground – they never leave it. Even when there is action outside the walls, it is restricted to the parking lot. It irritated me how obsessed the characters seemed with their home.
..and then we see Laing entering his office at work.
Not overly restricting for him it seems.
High-Rise is vile. It’s a car crash of sex, drugs and mutilation. I don’t care how hunky many people find Hiddleston, his ripped torso was no excuse for such a movie. No doubt the producers were very pleased with their creation due to its utopian sense of style, but overall it was pretty pointless. At no point did I warm to – or become interested in finding out what happened to – any of the soul-less characters. This movie was like a parallel world pantomime; where in reverse, the characters had their own quirks but remained flat and forgettable amongst the messy set.
Who on god’s earth commissioned this piece of crap?!
Forgive my harshness, but I really do mean it. High-Rise is one of the most tedious movies I’ve seen in years; mainly due to how it’s advertised as being something original, its publicity stills make it look like something you’d want to watch.
This couldn’t be further from the truth.
And the amount of people walking out during the movie..
Wow.
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