Film

High-Rise

Name: High-Rise
Genre: Drama
Released: 2015
Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Elisabeth Moss, Sienna Miller, Jeremy Irons, Luke Evans

Ben Wheatley's fevered adaptation of J.G. Ballard's novel turns a luxury tower block into a self-contained ecosystem, then a civil war. It's gorgeous, cruel, and structured like a fever dream — brutalist architecture, 70s decadence, and Tom Hiddleston playing icy chaos. Great for fans of blackly funny British class satire; less great if you want narrative clarity, because it's fragmented, disorienting, and proud of it.

TMDb rating

5.6

If you liked this

Snowpiercer2013

Bong Joon-ho takes the same class-warfare-in-a-sealed-box idea and turns it into a kinetic, brutal train-set revolution — front to back instead of top to bottom, same fury at inequality.

But It's blunter and more action-driven than High-Rise's cool detachment; if you wanted satire with a poker face, this one shouts.

The Platform2019

A vertical prison where food trickles down from the top floor is Ballard's tower distilled to pure metaphor — starvation replaces cocktail parties, but the point about hoarding is identical.

But It's grimmer and less stylish, with none of High-Rise's black comedy to cushion the horror.

Parasite2019

Bong again, smuggling the same architecture-as-class-system idea into a single house instead of a tower, with the same swerve from comedy into violence that catches you off guard.

But It's far more controlled and less surreal — if you liked High-Rise's chaos, this precision might feel too tidy.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Dredd2012

Same premise almost exactly — a self-contained tower block (Peach Trees) with its own economy that collapses into total war between floors — just filmed as brutal slow-motion action instead of arthouse satire.

If High-Rise's ideas intrigued you but its pacing didn't, this is the pulpy mirror image: the same failed-vertical-society premise turned into one of the best straight-up action films of the 2010s.

But There's zero interest in Ballard's irony or class anxiety — it's gleeful ultraviolence with a sci-fi badge, no subtext required.

A Clockwork Orange1971

Kubrick's cold, stylised ultraviolence and social satire is the obvious ancestor of Wheatley's aesthetic — gorgeous compositions housing genuine savagery, a soundtrack doing ironic heavy lifting.

But Its violence, especially toward women, is more graphic and lingering than anything in High-Rise.

Dogtooth2009

Lanthimos traps a family in a compound with its own invented rules, the same deadpan slide from absurd to horrifying that Wheatley pulls off with a tower full of architects and presenters.

But It's Greek-language, glacially paced, and even more opaque about what it's actually saying.

Dead Poets Society1989

A trashy, genuinely gross body-horror satire about the rich literally being a different species — the class-war-as-monster-movie version, with none of High-Rise's restraint.

But The effects are gnarly 80s practical horror, not arthouse — tonally it's a different planet.

The Belko Experiment2017

Office workers locked in a building and forced to kill each other floor by floor — a pulpier, more literal descendant of the same building-as-pressure-cooker premise.

But It has none of the visual imagination or ideas — just the structure, played straight for splatter thrills.

Lord of the Flies1990no page yet

Civilisation stripped away and replaced by tribal savagery, just with children on an island instead of adults in a penthouse — same thesis about how thin the social contract really is.

But It's earnest where High-Rise is ironic, and the performances are amateur compared to Wheatley's starry cast.

The Purge2013

A gated community turns lethal once the normal rules are suspended for one night — populist and jumpy, built on the same fear of what neighbours become once the lid comes off.

But It's a home-invasion thriller first and a satire a distant second — don't expect Ballard-level ambition.

The Tenant1976

Decades before Wheatley's tower, Polanski runs the same experiment: put a person inside a building with its own logic and watch identity dissolve into paranoia and violence.

A genuinely unsettling slow-burn from the era High-Rise is nostalgic for, about a man absorbed by his Paris apartment building's rules until he can't tell where the walls end and he begins.

But It's slower and more internal — dread built through atmosphere and Polanski's own unease, not spectacle.

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth2012no page yet

The true story behind Ballard's fiction: a real utopian high-rise housing project in St. Louis, built on the same faith in vertical living, that collapsed into crime and demolition within twenty years.

Archive footage and interviews trace how a genuinely optimistic piece of vertical-living architecture failed its residents — the real-world blueprint for every fictional tower-gone-wrong story, told with grief instead of style.

But No violence, no dark comedy, no Hiddleston — it's a sober, at times heartbreaking piece of social history, not entertainment.