What is it about towering apartment buildings that fascinates filmmakers, especially those working in horror, sci-fi, and fantasy? It’s easy to imagine these eyesores of urban development — especially those with secured entrances and exclusive tenants — harboring sinister secrets inside their walls.
High-Rise, director Ben Wheatley adaptation’s of J.G. Ballard‘s eponymous sci-fi novel, more than fits into this strange subset of films, as it focuses on dystopian class warfare inside a monolithic beast of Brualist architecture. With the film now in theaters (and on VOD), we look at other other films that imagine the incredible, horrifying, or supernatural happenings in and around these deceptively unassuming structures.
Apartment Trilogy (Roman Polanski)
Has any set of films turned the usual drudgeries of apartment living — climbing up your stairs for the umpteenth time, dealing with troubled amenities, and trying your best to acknowledge neighbors’ existence without getting the least bit involved in their lives among them — into such strong vessels for portent? Perhaps no living filmmaker understands the dimensions and ensuing possibilities of photographing closed quarters as well as Roman Polanski, whose “Apartment Trilogy” (Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Tenant) is suitably suffocating, scene-for-scene dialing up the anxiety of its high-concept plots through such banalities. Special notice to the final installment, The Tenant, which should forever change the way you gaze into a neighbor’s window. – Nick N.
Attack the Block (Joe Cornish)
While not all of Attack the Block takes place in a high-rise apartment, the film’s most memorable setpieces can be found in Wyndham Tower. From Hi-Hatz’s weed room to John Boyega’s run-for-his-life, slow-motion sprint down the hall, Joe Cornish does a sublime job in placing us inside this location and giving a sense of where our ensemble is in their struggle against the pitch-black alien forces. Aside from all the extraterrestrial mayhem, Cornish offers a perfectly fine-tuned ensemble with countless details to sell their surroundings. Allow it, bruv. – Jordan R.
Candyman (Bernard Rose)
Actor Tony Todd carved out his own place in horror history as the villain in director Bernard Rose‘s harrowing Gothic tale. Based on a story by Clive Barker, the 1992 film traces an investigation by a woman (Virginia Madsen) on the hunt for Candyman, a vengeful Bloody Mary-type spirit with a hook for a hand. But Todd’s nightmare-inducing performance, which is enhanced by inventive practical effects, is no match for the heinous reality of Cabrini-Green, the run-down Chicago public housing development in which the film is set. Though shooting never actually took place in the failed project (it was eventually demolished), Rose goes to extreme lengths to depict the abject poverty that plagued its African-American residents. As the female protagonist’s search for Candyman intensifies, she’s drawn deeper into Cabrini-Green, where crime and drug use infect the shadowy, graffiti-lined corridors of its various mid- and high-rise apartment complexes. Its bleak setting, paired with Candyman’s origins as a 19th-century black artist killed for loving a white woman, reverberate with still deeply relevant subtext — which, understandably, drew criticism upon its release (filmmaker Carl Franklin called it “irresponsible and racist”). – Amanda W.
Citadel (Ciarán Foy)
Few films depict the devastating, cyclical damage caused by urban drug epidemics quite like the debut feature from Irish filmmaker Ciarán Foy (Sinister 2). Shot in Glasgow, Scotland, it follows a young father crippled by agoraphobia after being widowed by a gang of monstrously deformed teenagers who infest the crumbling apartment complex where he and his wife once lived. When the assailants kidnap his baby daughter, he’s forced to overcome his fear and confront them on their turf, only to discover the chemical origins behind their condition. The underrated horror thriller is made all the disturbing as a catharsis for Foy, who based the film on a traumatizing attack he suffered at the hands of hammer-wielding teens. The deeply personal work boasts intense performances (James Cosmo especially chews the scenery as a mad priest) and villains who, with their wrinkly hands and inhuman features, resemble adolescent versions of David Cronenberg’s abominations from The Brood. Then there’s the titular tower. Though few scenes play out in the central structure, it looms ominously as a symbol of the protagonist’s overwhelming anguish, and of the inescapable aftereffects of rampant addiction. – Amanda W.
Delicatessen (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s strange, wonderful, Terry Gilliam-inspired dystopia explores the same high concept classist terrain as High-Rise, finding perhaps a bit more heart in its sadism. In an apartment building at the end of the world, a revolution bubbles up while a romance blossoms between a new tenant and the landlord’s daughter. Beautifully photographed by a young Darius Khondji, Delicatessen has stood the test of time as a homage that strikes its own, impressive path. – Dan M.
Liquid Sky (Slava Tsukerman)
If you’ve ever stood on the roof of your building, looked towards the sky, and wondered if a UFO was about to appear — you’re standing with a mysterious, body-builder-like German man who’s quickly turning into a romantic interest, obviously — Liquid Sky is the film for you. Both a rather thorough plunge into the club scene of early-80s New York and a sexually charged sci-fi comedy, this indescribably disturbing film has earned a cult status more for its music, fashion, and colors than anything else; what really underlies this is a vision of how it must have felt to occupy certain corners of the city at this time. There are eight million stories in the naked city, and this, against every ounce of logic and plausibility, has been one of them. – Nick N.
The Raid: Redemption (Gareth Evans)
It wasn’t his first film, but Gareth Evans’ bone-crunching The Raid: Redemption certainly put him on the map. The Indonesian actioner is perhaps the ultimate high-rise-set feature, in that we literally work our way through the building floor-by-floor (30 in total) as Rama (Iko Uwais) and company take down every baddie in sight — all in exceedingly inventive ways. With action choreography and a sense of spatial geography that puts Hollywood’s spectacle output to shame, it may be exhausting, but it’s never not impressive. For an American take on more or less the same concept, seek out Dredd. – Jordan R.
The Sentinel (Michael Winner)
Like much of Wheatley’s High-Rise, Michael Winner’s 1977 occult B-movie The Sentinel renders time and refined architecture into a loop of pre-ordained horrors. Subjecting a pre-Fright Night Chris Sarandon and Cristina Raines to phantom bumps in the night and a procession of grotesqueries in a decadent brownstone apartment, Winner’s film may be more notable for its immortal cast — Ava Gardner, Eli Wallach, Beverly D’Angelo, Burgess Meredith, John Carradine, and an uncredited Jeff Goldblum — than its cinematic merits. But while its exploitative subject matter — suicide as an incurable moral curse, deformed actors that could have been extras in Freaks — has only grown in bad taste with hindsight, there’s still a boldness to scenes like a birthday party for a cat that plays like a bad acid trip, complete with a fluorescent blue color palette. And, if nothing else, it’s a grim reminder that, like Wheatley’s film, you might want to be wary of your neighbors. – Michael S.
Shivers (David Cronenberg)
David Cronenberg produced a horrific commentary on loosening 1970s morals with the story of suburban apartment dwellers transformed into crazed sex zombies by a doctor’s mad experiment. The director had a dalliance with Ballard when he adapted the author’s 1973 book Crash, but this 1975 breakout shares many uncanny commonalities with High-Rise as it festers with escalating depravity – in this case, however, it’s wormy parasites, not electrical shortages, that start all the chaos. The film wasn’t Cronenberg’s first exploration of man’s forbidden desires, but it remains memorable for defining an era in its own weird, shocking way. – Amanda W.
High-Rise is now on VOD and in limited release.
What are your favorite films taking place in a high-rise?
See Also:
The Greatest Films Based on Supposedly “Unfilmable” Novels
Ben Wheatley Talks High-Rise, Predictive Fiction of Ballard & Editing While Scripting