Review of Sightseers (2012) by James S — 03 Dec 2012

It'd be fair to say that I wasn't much of a fan of director Ben Wheatley's last feature film, Kill List. After watching it I unfavourably compared it to something that might drop out of your bottom. It was with some hesitation then that I approached his new effort, Sightseers. Fortunately for me, and for Ben Wheatley as if this had turned out to be just as bad I may have been forced to hunt him down for a stern talking to, Sightseers is a much better film. That's not to say that it doesn't share similarities with Kill List, it is still a dark movie at times, but they aren't the ones which made me leave a cinema in a state of trembling fury.

Sightseers is a classically British film that taps into a sense of humour and state that is both highly amusing and easily identifiable. It reveals a side of national heritage Britain that is undoubtably just lurking under the surface of your average fell walker.

Chris and Tina are a youngish couple who have been dating for a few months and are about to embark on an adventurous caravanning holiday around northern Britain. Both of them have some rather deep personal issues and their mobile home acts like a pressure cooker that inevitably blows in a series of increasingly violent incidents.

Ben Wheatley has very astutely tapped into a very British conscience here. We all get slightly annoyed by the selfish actions of people around us or ticked off when people talk down to us. What Wheatley does is remove that rationality from his characters that makes the majority of people react to situations like this in a civilised manner. Imagine if you were unable to feel that restraint in your mind. It's those little fantasies that play out when someone annoys you in the supermarket being brought into reality. It's similar territory to that which David Fincher explored in Fight Club. Only here Wheatley has infused it with a British dark humour. It's because of the way in which we can almost identify with the actions of Chris and Tina that we don't view them as murderers in the same way we did Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis in Natural Born Killers. It's very clever.

Alice Lowe and Steve Oram who play Tina and Chris are a big part of what makes Sightseers work. Their characters are so completely realised. They are perfect performances of people who are far from perfect. Both Tina and Chris are searching for someone to give their lives meaning and share them with. They come from very different places though and it makes Sightseers a fascinating relationship study of how destructive two people can be for each other. Through their desperation to escape loneliness, neither of them sees just how bad the other is for them.

Sightseers when it does use violence is pretty horrific. We're not talking Kill List levels of horrific but it's still pretty full on. Yet at the same time, the film is both warm and occasionally moving which means that the characters connect with the audience in a way that Kill List's did not.

Ben Wheatley, along with Lowe and Oram have crafted a great little film which makes you laugh and nearly cry at the same time. If Wheatley can produce more like this then it might be possible to see Kill List as an unfortunate blip in a now promising career.