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High-Rise
High-Rise begins at the end, with Tom Middleston amidst ruin and bloodstains, roasting the leg of a dog on a spit, so when his character Dr. Robert Laing first moves into the building, we already know where things are headed. Upon arriving, Laing quickly learns the class politics of the monolithic Brutalist building — the richest are on the highest floors, the poorest on the lower floors. He’s summoned by “the architect,” a God-like Jeremy Irons dressed all in white with a limp, living with his wife in the luxurious penthouse complete with gardens and a horse, and who dictates some ominous lines about how we’re the architects of our own demise. Sex, violence, and retro-modernism are everywhere, even before anarchy breaks loose in the building. Laing gets brusquely tossed from an upper-class party, a fist-fight breaks out in a lower-class party. He starts an affair with the single mother on the floor above him. Eventually, the power goes out in the building and all hell breaks loose. (Whitney Mallett)
