High-Rise
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: May 13, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
65
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
21
Mixed:
14
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzMay 19, 2016
Like Wheatley’s 2011 film "Kill List," High-Rise switches genres effortlessly – black humour one moment, dystopic parable the next – until it becomes its own singular, horrifying, immensely captivating thing. Read full review
100
The Film StageJared MobarakMay 9, 2016
This thing is dense, wild, hilarious, timelessly prescient, and a feast for eyes and ears. I’m not sure ten viewings would be enough to even start recognizing each detail of set, characters, or plot. Read full review
100
SalonAndrew O'HehirApr 28, 2016
This High-Rise is a scathing, intoxicating visual and auditory experience, the most truthful and most powerful Ballard adaptation we’ve ever seen, or are likely to. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyMay 12, 2016
The filmmakers really do manage to visualize a distinctly Ballardian nightmare-scape. This in itself makes High-Rise worth experiencing. Read full review
85
TheWrapSam FragosoApr 28, 2016
There’s a sadistic streak in High-Rise that’s simultaneously hypnotizing and unnerving. If there’s a morality to Wheatley’s world, it’s nebulous at best. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyMay 11, 2016
The intoxicating mix of kitsch and chic barely conceals the psychosis underneath. Read full review
83
ConsequenceSarah KurchakMay 10, 2016
On the whole, High-Rise hits more often than it misses. It’s a playfully demented and dry evisceration of the tenuous hold that modern western civilization has on civility, walking a fine line between the best genre horror and the loftiest of intellectual indie cinema. Read full review
83
HitfixDrew McWeenySep 24, 2015
Wheatley is all about control of tone and how he's using this big obvious metaphor. His film is alive with human behavior, heightened at times and stylized as hell, but alive and identifiable and crackling with a wicked energy. Read full review
80
Total FilmKevin HarleyMar 16, 2016
Wheatley, Jump, Hiddleston and co occupy Ballard’s towering inferno with brazen style. If the plot wobbles precipitously, chalk it up to the high-rise ambition of a genuinely wayward Brit-film one-off. Read full review
80
EmpireNev PierceMar 14, 2016
Batshit crazy. Don’t expect a thriller in the seat-edge sense, but you will be thrilled — and repulsed — by this bold, faithful adaptation of Ballard’s ever-prescient picture of First World strife. Read full review
80
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganSep 16, 2015
Working with writer (and co-editor) Amy Jump again, Wheatley wades into the prescient 1975 text, delivering a complex, fluid interpretation which is respectful and almost-faithful while still being its own beautiful, crazed beast. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeySep 16, 2015
Ballard’s concept is meticulously, lovingly recreated, like a museum exhibit of itself. But the tone is always more playful than it is disturbing, a walled-off black joke which opts out of saying anything new. Read full review
79
The VergeTasha RobinsonApr 29, 2016
Wheatley's past films —€” the dark comedy Sightseers, the genre-defying slasher Kill List, the weird black-and-white micro-project A Field In England —€” come together in this film, which is crazed and violent, strange and appalling, image-driven and a moral lesson, and just plain strange. But Hiddleston's combination of placid calm and seething, hidden rage gives it all an anchor. Read full review
75
Boston GlobePeter KeoughMay 12, 2016
Because it stoops to obvious editorializing (a voice-over of Margaret Thatcher on capitalism?), it never quite rises to the top. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversMay 12, 2016
Wheatley and screenwriter Amy Jump (his wife) have energized Ballard's parable of class warfare in the technology age with a daring approach that will touch a nerve or have you bolting for the exits. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnSep 16, 2015
High-Rise isn't an entirely cohesive accomplishment, but that's part of its zany appeal. While in certain ways his weakest film, it maintains the morbid entertainment value found throughout Wheatley's work while marking an ambitious step up in scale. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangMay 26, 2016
High-Rise is a stubborn, incoherent wreck of a movie, and I mean that as fairly high praise. You won’t follow everything that happens, but you may feel weirdly at home. Read full review
70
SlateJacob BroganMay 13, 2016
Though Hiddleston’s performance is evocative and compelling, he rarely betrays any emotion beyond a kind of stoned curiosity. Read full review
63
New York PostSara StewartMay 13, 2016
Director Ben Wheatley (“Kill List”) is masterful with arresting imagery set in a dystopian spin on the ’70s; less so with a compelling narrative. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMay 12, 2016
Director Wheatley and screenwriter Amy Jump are clearly playing much of as pitch-black satire, but High-Rise keeps hammering home the same points, and not even the wealth of strong performances from Hiddleston, Miller and Irons are enough to salvage the day. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreMar 29, 2016
Unfortunately, the more things spiral into anarchy, the less interesting the story becomes. Read full review
60
CineVueBen NicholsonSep 16, 2015
The politics serves as footnote to the aesthetic for Wheatley and High-Rise is certainly style over substance. For fans of the British director, that may well be more than enough. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfSep 16, 2015
The movie ultimately feels both too glib and too hermetically sealed to resonate beyond its chaotic interiors. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyMay 12, 2016
There are certain movies that you really want to like based on their ambition, or their weirdness, or their ambitious weirdness, and ultimately you just can’t. Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise is one of those movies. Read full review
50
The Seattle TimesMichael UpchurchMay 19, 2016
Unfortunately as festivities in the building turn violent and/or orgiastic, Wheatley keeps resorting to high-speed montages rather than slyly crafted scenes. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaMay 13, 2016
High-Rise feels like a throwback to a time when this kind of social commentary, in literature and film, seemed shocking and true. Not sure whether it's progress to say that in 2016, High-Rise doesn't shock at all. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMay 12, 2016
The retro-futurist production design is gorgeously awful, the cast is awfully gorgeous, and the dystopian setting is explored with an appropriately Ballardian blend of suavity and aggression. But onscreen, High-Rise is curiously inert. The themes don’t resonate, and the story lags and lumbers. Read full review
50
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanMay 12, 2016
The overly schematic nature of High-Rise does not entirely diminish its pleasures as a story, which include, in addition to Wheatley’s richly lurid visual sensibility, an effective metaphorical tool in Laing. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMay 12, 2016
This is the best disappointing movie you will see all year. Read full review
50
Village VoiceMelissa AndersonMay 10, 2016
Ben Wheatley's muddled adaptation of the dystopian 1975 novel High-Rise — one of many Ballard books that examine the pathologizing effects of modern technology and convenience — suffers from being both too literal and too obtuse in its alterations. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineChuck BowenApr 25, 2016
The film's notion of a caste system is crudely reductive in the manner of a routine future-shock thriller. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterStephen DaltonSep 16, 2015
Rarely have so many classy ingredients added up to such a muted, muddled, multi-story mess. Of course, it is still better to make an ambitious failure than a boring success. A true disaster movie, in all senses, High-Rise is ultimately an ambitious, brilliant failure. Read full review
50
The PlaylistKevin JagernauthSep 16, 2015
screenwriter Amy Jump and director Ben Wheatley are less concerned with the message than with the madness, and their resulting picture is heavier on style than substance. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 16, 2015
What began as a self-contained allegory on open class warfare becomes a showcase for stylistic anarchy, wherein the ensuing orgy of sex and violence serves to justify a near-total breakdown of cinematic form. Read full review
40
The GuardianHenry BarnesSep 16, 2015
Wheatley has made High Rise his story, instead of Ballard’s. That’s fine – but, unfortunately, it’s a less interesting take. Read full review
0
ObserverRex ReedMay 11, 2016
A trash wallow in sex, nudity, violence, cruelty to animals and the skewering of contemporary society, it will predictably appeal to kids and art house patrons who crave the cinematic roller coaster rides of outrage and chaos that lead to downright anarchy. Saner, more rational minds are advised to look elsewhere. Read full review
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