BEN Wheatley's High-Rise preserves the acclaimed director's now well-established reputation for creating gleefully unsettling cinema.
A beautifully shot adaptation of JG Ballard's 1975 anarchic novel, in which the inhabitants of a malfunctioning luxury tower block slowly abandon societal conventions to establish a crazed new order, the darkly comic tone of Wheatley's film version is established by an early scene in which star Tom Hiddleston nonchalantly munches on a freshly barbecued dog's leg.
In addition to myriad crimes against animals, High-Rise also includes scenes of rape, assault, murder, naked sunbathing – Hiddlestonians take note – and spontaneous disco dancing, as the titular tower gradually degenerates into a multi-storey mire of lawless, primal human behaviour.
As the end credits rolled at last week's special preview screening with a post-film Q&A featuring Wheatley and star Dan Renton Skinner, the audience at QFT Belfast were reduced to stunned silence – a fair indicator that the Essex-born director's latest work has hit its intended mark.
Indeed, your appreciation or lack thereof for the 42-year-old film-maker's wonderfully warped canon – which also includes psychedelic folk horror A Field In England, homicidal romantic comedy Sightseers and the impressive micro-budget Mike Leigh-aping debut, suburban crime shocker Down Terrace – is likely to hinge on how you dealt with the shock twist ending of Kill List's subversive, genre-blurring tale about a pair of hitmen on a job that veers off into steadily more disturbing territory.
All of the aforementioned flicks delighted in defying cinematic convention to take viewers well beyond their comfort zones: God only knows what those who see High-Rise off the back of Wheatley's pair of well-received Doctor Who episodes from 2014 will make of it.
However, there can be little doubt that he was the ideal man to finally rescue this JG Ballard adaptation from 30-odd years of 'development hell'.
With a screenplay by wife and regular collaborator Amy Jump, Wheatley – who came up with the ingenious idea of setting his delicious retro-futuristic looking film version in the same 1970s era in which the novel was originally written – has clearly relished the opportunity to do cinematic justice to a book he loved as a teenager.
"I think that we have enough distance from the 1970s now for it to seem kind of glamorous and interesting," explains the director, who shot the film in Co Down on sets constructed at the disused Bangor Leisure Centre.
"Our basic tenet was that we wanted to make a translation of the book rather than just using it as jumping-off point."
High-Rise makes a somewhat unique contribution to apocalyptic cinema in that the 'collapse' in the film occurs indoors, propagated by characters who actively choose to revel in the ensuing chaos and carnage rather than fleeing from it.
Even Tom Hiddleston's relatively level-headed pathologist Dr Robert Laing chooses to remain in his comfortable des res as the building begins to schism. Before too long he's stopped going to work, barricaded himself in and embarked on an unconventional programme of interior redecoration.
"It's not so much an apocalypse as a moment of change," comments Wheatley on the murder, mayhem and dog-grilling in his film.
"That's what I like about it: the world isn't destroyed beyond all recognition – they just start again and it will probably keep going round and round. It's not ever going to settle.
"It's not quite the vibe of mohawks, motorbikes and crossbows you get in a lot of 70s post-apocalyptic fiction."
As for why the film was shot in Bangor, it seems that the seaside town just happened to offer exactly the kind of handy, period-correct, budget-saving facilities Wheatley and co were looking for.
"I'd just watched the making of Trainspotting and I really liked the way they had shot it in an old factory," the director explains .
"I knew if we could find a location like that it would give us a lot of the rooms that we needed and we could save money. Even though I had more money than I've ever had before on this film, it still wasn't enough to go off and build loads of sets."
After a long and fruitless search, it was the defunct but otherwise relatively intact Bangor Leisure Centre that finally fit the bill.
"Bangor Leisure Centre was literally the last place we looked at but when we got there it was like 'oh my God, this is perfect. It was so big and from exactly the right period.
It hadn't been touched since it closed, probably because it was right next door to the police station.
"The gym and corridors we needed were all there and we built the apartments inside the five-a-side football area.
"Then we managed to find the walled garden nearby, which was perfect for the rooftop garden scenes, and a disused supermarket just like the one in the script. We even used the M&S car park as the one outside the lobby.
Shooting a film in Bangor with Tom Hiddleston obviously caused a bit of a stir ("I met the mayor" admits Wheatley), and the director has nothing but praise for his leading man.
"Tom was the first person we got for the film," he reveals.
"He's very interesting as an actor, there's a nervous energy to him that's very intriguing. I think he's only going to get better and better as he goes on – he's only in his mid-30s, so there's still another 20 years of 'leading Hiddleston' to come."
With High-Rise hitting cinemas this weekend, Wheatley will now be turning all his full attention to his next film, Free Fire: an explosive crime thriller set in 1970s Boston and centred on an IRA gun deal gone very wrong indeed.
"I was inspired by newspaper reports about police shoot-outs where they shoot hundreds of rounds and barely hit anyone," he says of the project, which features a pair of Irish stars in Cillian Murphy and returning Wheatley regular, Belfast-born Kill List/Down Terrace/A Field In England man Michael Smiley.
"Apparently, it's quite hard to hit a moving target and unless you hit them in the head or heart they probably won't go down.
"So the film is basically a huge extended shoot-out in a warehouse. By the end, everyone is crawling around covered in blood and bashing each other over the head because they've run out of bullets.
"It becomes quite nasty and vicious – but also quite funny in a kind of Evil Dead way."
Sounds very 'Ben Wheatley' to me.
:: High-Rise (18) is released today.
