Tell them, my song.

For the record:

I’ve already watched my share of “difficult”, “artistic”, “socially critical” and “not for the masses” movies before I made my Abitur – and that was more than two and a half decades ago. So let’s just say I’ve done my homework and studied cinema and movies enough to be entitled to my own opinion.

I’ve watched the 1973 movie Themroc with Michel Piccoli as a teenager, actually liked it and got the message. Why do I bring up the classic Themroc in this context? Because at least on paper, Themroc and High-Rise with Tom Hiddleston, Luke Evans, Jeremy Irons and a rather respectable catalog of other interesting actors have a lot in common. In execution, however, Themroc still is a watchable movie with a coherent narrative while High-Rise simply is not.

High-Rise is a disgusting pornographic snuff picture that tries to present itself as art. As if all the random, insane cruelty between the human population in the film is not enough, it also needs to butcher and roast dogs on an open fire to wipe out even the last bit of decency that might have been hidden somewhere in this sick orgy.

No, this movie is not a metaphor or an allegory of any kind anymore. It’s been a worrying trend for quite some time now that today’s audiences apparently have been brutalized to a point that they are not bothered by cruelty anymore. And I actually mean cruelty, not “simple” violence. The line between cruelty and violence is not even blurred anymore; it has become normal business even in TV series to show in explicit – and, yes, pornographic – detail how people are violated and hurt, without adding anything meaningful to the plot, story or message. It’s just there to keep people watching.

I don’t mind watching gory horror movies or hard action flicks — as long as the violence does not sink to a level of sheer cruelty, sadism or torture porn,  as long as it is comic-style violence or as long as it actually adds something to the picture.

But lately, a lot of the things that are shown in new productions are just sick, cruel and twisted and only serve the purpose of catching the attention of an audience that must be suffering from an unbelievable emotional numbness and that cannot be reached with normal means anymore.

High-Rise is one of those productions, and directors (and authors) who need to put dogs on a barbecue shouldn’t be allowed to publish their excrement and pretend its art.

And no, I am not opening this for discussion.

In my enthusiasm about Dark Shadows, I briefly forgot about that other gem for genre fans that I saw this year: Cabin In The Woods. That movie basically is “The Evil Dead” meets “Cube”, and it’s a marvelous homage to the horror genre. This one I also wanted to see multiple times in a row. So there are still good movies out there, and apparently more of them than my stressed little brain wants to remember sometimes.