The new extended trailer for Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise doesn’t just provide us with more footage than the evocative, but somewhat oblique trailer that was released last month and the faux-commercial trailer that was released a month before that. For the first time, the viewer gets a strong impression of the film’s Margaret Thatcher-era class warfare themes, inherited from J.G. Ballard’s classic 1975 novel and adapted by screenwriter Amy Jump. We see working-class residents of the self-contained apartment building enduring power outages and overflowing garbage on the lower floors, while in the upper levels, their wealthier residents dress up as French aristocracy and entertain themselves with extravagant parties. Meanwhile, Dr. Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) finds himself stuck somewhere between the two factions, literally and figuratively, on a mid-level floor as the prospect of violent uprising mounts.
While we do get a better look here at both Jeremy Irons as the building’s designer and Sienna Miller as the object of Laing’s affection, what’s really revealed here is Wheatley’s bleak view of humanity—and perhaps more insight into why The A.V. Club’s Ignatiy Vishnevetsky gave it a B+ at the Toronto International Film Festival.
High-Rise is scheduled for a March 18 release in the U.K. and a May 13 release in the U.S.