Movies
[Review] Ben Wheatley’s ‘High-Rise’ is an Excellent Adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s Novel
In director Ben Wheatley’s most polished film to date, Dr. Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) moves into a state-of-the-art, revolutionary apartment complex. Set in 1975 with an other-worldly, futuristic feel, this high-rise reaches forty stories into the sky, nearly touching the tips of the clouds. The building is structured in a literal sense, housing the working class on the bottom floors, the middle class in the center, and so on, reserving the top floors for only the most wealthy of occupants. At first, it appears that this massive infrastructure is an ideal place to make a home, as it provides breathtaking views, several convenient amenities, and wild, exciting parties attended by all floors. However, as time drags on, and the residents near the top become more and more egocentric and wasteful of their electricity and resources, those living beneath them begin to feel the repercussions of their selfish acts, and in their amplifying desperation, begin to revolt.
Based on the J.G. Ballard novel, High-Rise is a fascinating portrayal of the stresses that come with defining people by their socioeconomic status. Like a vertical Snowpiercer, dividing the apartment units into segmented stations where people are forcefully kept in their place and regarded only by their income interestedly exaggerates societal norms of identification in order to point out the cruelty of the cutthroat capitalist agenda, and how it stifles many from living simple, safe lives. It starts small, with Laing being kicked out of the same elite cocktail parties that he was once invited to, and swiftly festers into food shortages, power outages, and suicides, as the overconsumption by the rich leaves little behind for those living on the lower rungs of the complex. This film seeks to comment not only on how free enterprise is often only beneficial to a small percentage of the population, but on the standard practice of trickle-down economics, and the soullessness that comes to embody so many of the wealthy who no longer have to concern themselves with empathy for the rest of humanity.
Sitting comfortably on the tip top of the prosperous few on the fortieth floor is “The Architect”, the man who designed and owns this experimental structure. Although he devotes the majority of his time to working on the extension of his already impressive creation, when the riots below him erupt and the building begins to fall to shambles, he’s oddly complacent about the destruction of his precious assemblage. Likewise, the protagonist of the film, Dr. Laing, displays little in the way of emotion when the people he’s been trying to befriend betray him, despite the fact that he’s supposed to be the film’s emotional core. Even though he quickly develops a relationship with Toby, the little boy he lives one floor up from him, and reacts in an agitated manner when the boy brings up Laing’s recently deceased sister, he shows little more than a poker face when his hallways are filled with trash and his neighbors turn into murdering lunatics.
Strange, slow character development aside, High-Rise is filled with more noteworthy trademarks than it is setbacks. Wheatley has always been a master of capturing the most corrupt side of human nature, and displaying it in unabashed, surreal, refreshing perspectives (whether he paints them positively or negatively), and this film is no exception. His merciless depiction of the lonely few at the top includes rigid high fashion that would make attendees of a Gatsby party feel jealous, a detached woman who uses Laing for sex but wouldn’t dare dream of dating beneath her station, and even a spoiled woman riding a horse through her fairytale garden as she screams at her maid nearby on foot. However, his stylistic judgment isn’t just reserved for the ones who can afford to chug champagne like water. When the power cuts and the ill deeds done by those on the bottom are masked by darkness, a familiar character lowers himself from the actions of a perverted antagonist to those of an abusive madman. Everyone in this building is guilty of something, but they are all victims of the society that demands to rank them.
For a film that attempts to criticize the detrimental system that is society’s economic classes, mirrored by the positioning of the residents of the tower block, it’s odd how quickly the decline of life within the walls is scurried through. Although the beginning is slightly slow-paced to set up the parameters of the complex and the lives of those who fill it, and the ending is dragged out as well, the actual specific events that cause the descent into madness and the slow decay of it all are only illustrated in a brief, fleeting, albeit powerful montage. It would’ve been nice to see the middle of the story stretched out and the bookends whittled down to create a more balanced, understandable and accurately metaphorical plot line to follow. However, despite its few shortcomings, High-Rise is an excellent adaptation that once again proves that Ben Wheatley is one of the most fascinating photographers working in film today; one who’s worthy of working with great, well-known actors, and capable of helming ambitious, aesthetically stunning projects.
Editorials
Five Serial Killer Horror Movies to Watch Before ‘Longlegs’
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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