Film adaption of JG Ballard’s classic dystopian novel High Rise delivers the shocks

Ed Power talks to film director Ben Wheatley about how his adaptation of JG Ballard’s novel finds humour in some gruesome situations

THERE is a scene early in Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of JG Ballard’s classic dystopian novel High Rise in which a character removes the flesh from a cadaver’s face and then hacks its skull open. The sequence is at once repellent and hilarious — a stomach-twisting paradox that will chime with anyone who has followed Wheatley since his break-out 2011 movie Kill List.

“Life is funny most of the time. Even when bad things are happening it can be amusing,” nods the director. “There’s always an element of both, isn’t there?