'High-Rise' Trailer Meets With Moderate Resistance

From the early responses at fall film festivals like Toronto and Fantastic Fest last year, it’s abundantly clear that Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise isn’t going to be for everyone, but it certainly appears to be for me. It’s set to finally hit in a month or so, and there’s yet another new trailer to keep you occupied until then.

This trailer is similar to what we’ve seen before, what with the whole “excellent specimen” bit, but it also captures the madness and violence in J.G. Ballard’s novel—I haven’t seen it, but I still maintain that Ben Wheatley is the perfect director to adapt this sharp, skewering, blackly comic dystopian satire. This looks like a chaotic nightmare, which is precisely what it should be.

Here’s a synopsis:

HIGH-RISE stars Tom Hiddleston as Dr. Robert Laing, the newest resident of a luxurious apartment in a high-tech concrete skyscraper whose lofty location places him amongst the upper class. Laing quickly settles into high society life and meets the building’s eccentric tenants: Charlotte (Sienna Miller), his upstairs neighbor and bohemian single mother; Wilder (Luke Evans), a charismatic documentarian who lives with his pregnant wife Helen (Elizabeth Moss); and Mr. Royal (Jeremy Irons), the enigmatic architect who designed the building. Life seems like paradise to the solitude-seeking Laing. But as power outages become more frequent and building flaws emerge, particularly on the lower floors, the regimented social strata begins to crumble and the building becomes a battlefield in a literal class war. HIGH-RISE is the latest film by cult British director Ben Wheatley (Kill List, A Field in England), an ambitious adaptation of the J.G. Ballard novel of the same name.

High-Rise hits on demand starting April 28 and theaters a few weeks later on May 13.