High Life (2018)
…………………………………………………
High Life Movie Review
High Life is a 2018 science fiction horror film directed by Claire Denis and starring Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche. It’s such an interesting movie.
………………………………………………….
“Break the laws of nature,
you have to pay for it“
…………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………..
The film follows a group of criminals who are tricked into believing they will be freed if they participate in a mission to travel on a spaceship towards a black hole to find an alternate energy source while being sexually experimented on by the scientists on board.
The story is absolutely terrific as it’s authentic and something that I haven’t seen before in this genre. Though not particularly plausible as I personally could not see such a dark development in future, it still works in a dystopian kind of way. Everything about the black hole worked for me personally as it was very well explored, mysterious and otherworldly. The ambiguous ending is the only acceptable one in this instance.
I loved seeing a movie about bad people and criminals at its center. That was different and interesting. And I appreciated how realistic the movie is for portraying the attempted rape and also violence on display as of course these people are not going to get along. And I also really liked the sexual experiment part of the story which was creepy and continuously disturbing, but it worked in the context of the story and it provided us with some genuine chills.
…………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………..
Robert Pattinson is pretty good as Monte the protagonist and I liked his performance overall, but his constant calm talk really bothered me as it bordered on pretentious. Juliette Binoche has never played such a horrible human being before and she excelled at it. She killed her family and she rapes and uses these people for her scientific experiments. She’s so evil and thus very creepy and memorable. The baby is so damn cute and the adult girl was great as well.
High Life is a very artistic movie for better and for worse. I personally would not have liked this film five years ago, but now I appreciate the more artistic pictures so this really appealed to me. Yes, sometimes it was annoying and I personally found the beginning more of a gimmick than anything else as the narrative could have easily been regularly told, but still the movie is constantly very disturbing and fueled by a sense of danger and above all desperation that it really made an impact on me along with its overall authentic nature.
…………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………..
And in terms of audio-visuals, it excelled for sure. The score is superb, very evocative and very fitting for the genre of SF horror. It’s so good. The same goes for the cinematography which is very accomplished and also artistically inclined. Some shots here, especially the one with those bodies in space, were so striking. The dialogue is also pretty good, but I wanted much more of it as the movie’s not talkative enough for me. Sometimes the violence went overboard, but most of the time the chills were effectively achieved.
High Life can be overly violent and not everything in it works, but it’s overall a highly artistic, sophisticated and at the end of the day very authentic and different genre film that really stays with you afterwards. Juliette Binoche superbly played a horrible human being and the movie truly is quite disturbing in a couple of scenes. The script is excellent, the visuals are mesmerizing, the score is evocative and the dark tone worked as the movie is filled with a constant sense of desperation and danger.
