The Skinny’s chatting to director Ben Wheatley on the phone on the evening of the Glasgow Film Festival programme launch, with the Scottish premiere of his new film being among the screenings publicly announced as we speak. High-Rise, his fifth feature, is an adaptation of JG Ballard’s beloved 1975 novel. It’s a dystopic tale of alienation, corruption and societal breakdown within the confines of a lavish apartment complex that starts off sleek and appealing, only to gradually transform into the kind of tower block that wouldn’t seem out of place in the world of Judge Dredd. Tom Hiddleston and Jeremy Irons, as grand architect Royal, topline an impressive cast for the British director’s first foray into bigger budget filmmaking.
“What it gives you as a filmmaker is much more control,” Wheatley says of the scale change. “You can have much more control on very basic stuff like the colours of the rooms, how costumes relate to spaces, and how spaces relate to the overall design of the whole film. I think it’s a big difference…
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