The body hor­ror inspi­ra­tions behind High-Rise

There’s a gris­ly ear­ly scene in High-Rise that pro­vides a stun­ning coun­ter­weight to the film’s weird­ly serene set-up, where Tom Hiddleston’s Dr Robert Laing becomes acquaint­ed with the tow­er block that will lat­er con­sume him. With a short, sharp shock, the scene exhibits body hor­ror at its best: wince induc­ing, stom­ach churn­ing and whol­ly mesmerising.

The decon­struc­tion of the phys­i­cal form is a promi­nent trope in direc­tor Ben Wheatley’s work – few film­mak­ers work­ing today do it bet­ter. The night­mar­ish tone of Kill List, for exam­ple, is knit­ted togeth­er with moments of grim uncom­pro­mis­ing vio­lence, cul­mi­nat­ing in the dev­as­tat­ing ​‘hunch­back’ scene. Sim­i­lar­ly, corpses punc­tu­ate Sight­seers: one with a caved-in face, anoth­er with a ripped-open throat.

In this sense body hor­ror ful­fils a black­ly com­ic pur­pose rem­i­nis­cent of Mon­ty Python and the work of Sight­seers’ exec­u­tive pro­duc­er, Edgar Wright. In Wheatley’s A Field in Eng­land there is a tran­scen­dent ele­ment to the gore as the film switch­es from the cere­bral to the phys­i­cal dur­ing its vio­lent finale. A leg is shat­tered and a head is blown apart in gra­tu­itous black-and-white slo-mo, mak­ing the pre­ced­ing psy­che­del­ic odyssey sud­den­ly feel dis­turbing­ly real.

Wheatley’s pro­fi­cien­cy when it comes to prac­ti­cal effects is root­ed in his TV back­ground, notably as cre­ator of The Wrong Door, a sur­re­al­ist com­e­dy sketch show that fea­tured plen­ty of CGI and phys­i­cal effects. Accord­ing to Dan Mar­tin, Wheatley’s reg­u­lar pros­thet­ics super­vi­sor, the direc­tor is well-versed in the prac­ti­cal­i­ties of body hor­ror. ​“It’s a nice lux­u­ry to have a direc­tor that knows enough about this stuff that you can talk to them on a tech­ni­cal lev­el,” he says. ​“I like to turn up to set with enough room to give him options [for an effect], so that he’s not restrict­ed to what he choos­es on the day.”

Mar­tin reveals that pre-pro­duc­tion con­ver­sa­tions with Wheat­ley take in a range of inspi­ra­tions, includ­ing films, books and paint­ings. In the case of that ear­ly scene in High-Rise, Wheat­ley ref­er­enced ​‘With Dead Head’, a noto­ri­ous pho­to­graph from 1981 of a young Damien Hirst pos­ing with a real sev­ered head in a morgue. The scene goes a long way to cap­tur­ing the per­verse and macabre qual­i­ty of the image, even using an actor who resem­bles the head in the pho­to. ​“We brought on a pathol­o­gist to help with that scene, check­ing the anato­my at every stage to make sure it was real­is­tic,” recalls Mar­tin. ​“There was a very sat­is­fy­ing audi­ble reac­tion from the peo­ple on set the first time we did it.”

Wheat­ley first hired Mar­tin in 2011 to work on a short he was mak­ing for Fright­Fest, a zom­bie-infused homage to John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13. Since then he’s been at the heart of a clique of cross-col­lab­o­rat­ing British hor­ror direc­tors. Last year he pro­vid­ed pros­thet­ic effects for Aaaaaaaah!, an absur­dist, low-bud­get film pro­duced by Wheat­ley and writ­ten and direct­ed by Steve Oram, the star and co-writer of Sight­seers. Martin’s work on Aaaaaaaah!, which imag­ines a world where humans have regressed to an ape-like state, includ­ed cre­at­ing a selec­tion of fake gen­i­talia – a task he also per­formed on A Field in Eng­land for a scene fea­tur­ing a dis­eased, warty appendage. ​“I’ve made a lot of penis­es in my career,” he sighs.

Expect more gore (but prob­a­bly no phal­lic mon­strosi­ties) in Wheatley’s next film, Free Fire, which is due out lat­er this year and is a mark­er of Wheatley’s rise up the Hol­ly­wood food chain –Mar­tin Scors­ese is exec pro­duc­ing and the impres­sive cast includes Brie Lar­son, Cil­lian Mur­phy and Sam Riley. It is also the director’s first fea­ture set out­side the UK, depict­ing a shootout between two gangs in a Boston ware­house in 1978. ​“It has some hor­ri­ble moments in it,” con­firms Mar­tin, who was giv­en lim­it­ed time to work with the cast to cre­ate their pros­thet­ics before shoot­ing began in sum­mer 2015.

Mar­tin is philo­soph­i­cal about the mer­its of body hor­ror, con­ced­ing that in some cas­es it becomes gra­tu­itous and devoid of artis­tic val­ue (his oth­er cred­its include The Human Cen­tipede 2, which he believes was done a dis­ser­vice in the edit­ing process). Regard­ing Wheatley’s work, though, he is con­fi­dent in the ratio­nale behind the revul­sion. ​“The thing about Ben’s hor­ror is that although a lot of it is root­ed in the destruc­tion of the human form, it doesn’t wan­der into that more voyeuris­tic, sadis­tic area of hor­ror that’s quite com­mon in the post-Hos­tel landscape.

“There was a weird shift around that time when hor­ror direc­tors stopped say­ing ​‘Look at this, isn’t it appalling?’ and start­ed say­ing ​‘Look at this, isn’t it amaz­ing?’ There’s a sort of mean-spirit­ed­ness that comes out of that that I’m not par­tic­u­lar­ly keen on, where you’re invit­ed to rev­el in it rather than be hor­ri­fied. I don’t think Ben does that.”