From The Raid to High-Rise to The Towering Inferno, 5 top movies about getting stuck in tower blocks
- David Cronenberg’s Shivers has shocks galore, a Manhattan skyscraper is taken over in Gremlins 2, while High-Rise is a prefab dystopian thriller
- Action adventure The Raid takes place in a drug kingpin’s apartment building and The Towering Inferno is classic disaster movie fare
As apartment buildings all across Hong Kong are being suddenly sealed off in the continuing efforts to curb the spread of Covid-19, we look back at five top films about the potential perils of being stuck in a tower block.
1. Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
Joe Dante’s oft-overlooked sequel to his 1984 smash sees a futuristic Manhattan skyscraper overrun by mischievous gremlins.
Returning protagonists Billy (Zach Galligan) and Kate (Phoebe Cates) are now employees of Trump-esque property tycoon and media mogul Daniel Clamp (John Glover), whose “smart building” becomes ground zero for a new outbreak. Their aversion to sunlight keeps the meddlesome mogwai contained during the day, but if the building is not sealed before nightfall, New York could face a citywide epidemic.
Gremlins 2 strikes a more anarchic, playful tone than its predecessor and its inflated budget allowed Dante to introduce a host of new critter designs, after a visit to Christopher Lee’s genetic research lab leaves many of them amusingly mutated. A bat gremlin, spider gremlin, even an intellectually superior talking gremlin wreak havoc in the corridors and stairwells, crashing Clamp’s TV studio to take to the airwaves.
Dante also uses the film to satirise ’80s yuppie culture and other movies like Rambo and The Wizard of Oz, while deconstructing the very nature of filmmaking, sequels, and the movie-going experience.
2. Shivers (1975)
For his first full-length feature film, Canadian provocateur David Cronenberg shocked audiences and critics alike with this visceral tale of lust-fuelled infection.