Tom Hiddleston, Sienna Miller, Jeremy Irons and Elisabeth Moss star in Ben Wheatley’s (Kill List, Sightseers) much-anticipated adaptation of J. G. Ballard’s savage, brilliant 1975 novel, a satire of Thatcherite excess and consumerist values.
Hiddleston is Dr. Robert Laing who moves into a luxurious new apartment block, a shining beacon of modernism. He’s quickly seduced by its social scene, going to glamorous cocktail parties where the conversation always leads back to Royal (Jeremy Irons), the architect who designed it.
But then flaws begin to emerge in the building and in parallel, cracks in the regimented social strata also start to show. Eventually nihilism, in the form of drugs and alcohol, extreme sex and violence and acts of depravity and destructiveness prevail, as Ballard’s dystopian parable reaches its climax.
Adapted by screenwriter Amy Jump (Wheatley’s wife) and a long-time passion project for producer Jeremy Thomas, Wheatley’s film is brave, daring and true to Ballard’s anarchic vision.
