TIFF Review: Ben Wheatley's 'High Rise' Starring Tom Hiddleston, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans & Elisabeth Moss

“I think the future will be boredom interrupted by totally unpredictable periods of volatility. I expect the world's great suburban sprawl to be constantly rippled by all kinds of outbursts of activity, like the tragedy at Waco. What I predict are these outbreaks of psychopathy. We won't be able to predict these and they may provide a necessary role, a little roughage in the social system,” author J.G. Ballard told Sci-Fi Universe in 1995. It’s an idea not far removed from his novel “High-Rise,” published in 1975, and now arriving on the big screen forty years later. The wild tale of disorder and disarray may be absurdist, but in an era of arguably the biggest gaps ever between rich and poor, its vision of class warfare has never been more resonant. However, screenwriter Amy Jump and director Ben Wheatley are less concerned with the message than with the madness, and the resulting picture is more style than substance.

Set in a reto-future version of the 1970s, Tom Hiddleston leads...