Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Life for the residents of a tower block begins to run out of control.
Ben Wheatley's adaptation of J.G. Ballard's novel is a visually audacious and distinctly British fever dream. The cinematography is genuinely exceptional — lush, disorienting 70s-tinged compositions that viscerally convey the block's social stratification and decay. Its conception and tone are utterly singular, blending satire, horror, and surrealism in a way few films attempt. However, the narrative deliberately resists coherence in ways that feel less like bold ambiguity and more like structural evasion, and the ending dissipates rather than lands, leaving the film's provocations unresolved in an unsatisfying rather than productively open way. The ensemble acting is strong but unevenly deployed across the sprawling cast.