Directed by: Ben Wheatley.
Written by: Alice Lowe & Steve Oram.
Starring: Alice Lowe (Tina), Steve Oram (Chris), Eileen Davies (Carol), Seamus O'Neill (Mr. Grant), Monica Dolan (Janice), Jonathan Aris (Ian), Aymen Hamdouchi (Chalid Sulinan).
Ben
Wheatley’s Kill List was one of the best films of 2012 that very few people
saw. That film went from kitchen sink drama to hit man-for-hire film to bizarre
cult horror film that brought the violence in the first act full circle.
Despite the tonal shifts in that film, Wheatley masterfully handled his ever twisting
plot. By comparison, his morbid black comedy Sightseers is a less ambitious
effort – but it is still a very entertaining, bloody, hilarious comedy about
two average British-Joes who become serial killers on the road.
Tina
(Alice Lowe) is in her mid-30s, and still lives at home with her mother (Eileen
Davies), who tries very hard to make Tina feel bad about wanting to have any
sort of life outside of caring for her. When she announces he’s going on
holiday with her new boyfriend Chris (Steve Oram) – packing up into an old
caravan, to visit historic sights and museums in Northern England, her mother
thinks it’s a horrible idea. About that, if nothing else, she is at least
right.
The
trip starts out uneventful enough. The two go to an historic sight, and while
being given a tour on a tram, Chris is outraged when he sees another tourist
littering – and lets him know. This other man says nothing – simply gives Chris
the middle finger, and moves on with his day. Later, in the parking lot, this
same man litters again – and Chris backs over him with his caravan – the first
of many bloody deaths in Sightseers. This one was at least an accident – but
Chris gets a certain degree of satisfaction out of killing the man who made him
feel inadequate. There will be more deaths – these ones not so accidental.
In
the early stages of Sightseers, you may well find yourself relating to these
two people. They are beaten down by life and in desperate need of a vacation –
aren’t we all? And, in our darker moments, who hasn’t dreamed of killing
someone just for being rude? That is what makes Sightseers so effective – that
these two start off so normal. But with each passing murder, their
justification for committing it becomes less and less – they start with the guy
being rude, then move onto someone who makes them feel inadequate, and by the
third death, they are killing someone for doing almost precisely what they did
to the rude guy at the start. After that, it practically becomes a
free-for-all. And surprisingly, it is Tina who really lets go – killing people
for no reason at all, much to the chagrin of Chris. When he says to her “I’ve
killed more people with you in 3 days than I did in the six months since I was
made redundant” – telling, the only part she responds to is that he was made
redundant (he had told her he was on sabbatical) – and not that he basically
just confessed to being a serial killer, which breezes by her – and the
audience – so quickly, and is never remarked on again. By this point, there’s
no turning back.
The
two lead performances in the movie are excellent. Oram and Lowe worked with
director Wheatley to write the screenplay based on Wheatley’s original idea. As
such, they were able to mold their characters to be an almost perfect fit for
them. The two wouldn’t look out of place in a working class Mike Leigh drama.
Lowe in particular is brilliant, as she radically transforms from the meek,
beaten down woman we meet at the beginning of the film, into the more gleefully
sociopathic of the pair – and she makes the transformation feel natural.
As
I mentioned off the top, Sightseers is not quite the film that Kill List was –
that film was far more ambitious a project than Sightseers. And yet, Sightseers
does confirm Wheatley as a director to watch. Both films start slow, and then
gradually twist and turn themselves into something far more than we anticipated
when it started. If your taste in comedy runs pitch black, than Sightseers is
for you.
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