Sightseers Review

Movie: Sightseers
By: Orlok
Date: February 11, 2013

Camping life (and death)

Ben Wheatley is like a box of chocolates... you never know what you gonna get. After his first crime comedy "Down Terrace" and his kitchen sink drama goes horror "Kill List" he's now exploring the black comedy and road movie genre with his latest film "Sightseers".

In a short review on "Kill List" I already mentioned Wheatley as a director to watch. With "Sightseers" he proves himself again as a director that can handle all kinds of different genre films - but with a twist.
When word got out that Ben Wheatley was going for a road movie / black comedy it got a lot of people curious. Now it's finally here and we're in for a fun, sometimes gory trip with Tina (Alice Lowe) and Chris (Steve Oram)!

Roadtrip!

Steve and Tina have a relationship for a couple of months now and Steve wants to show wallflower Tina his world. With his world Steve means: on holiday with his beloved caravan and visit some important museums and landmarks like the Keswick Pencil Museum, the Crich Tramway Museum and the Ribblehead Viaduct.
However, Steve becomes prickly when they encounter litterbugs, posh people, pre-booked camp sites and noisy girls on a hen's night. And all this rubs Steve up the wrong way but he doesn't want to let his holiday with Tina be spoiled because of such troubles...

Happy campers

Alice Lowe and Steve Oram both wrote the script (with a bit of help by Wheatley's wife Amy Jump) for this film and to get a right feel to it they lived in a caravan, visiting the places you see in the film. This definitely pays off: the characters of Chris and Tina are lovable as well as sometimes stubborn and intolerable. Especially Chris is quite a character with a mind of his own; if something doesn't goes his way he'll make sure it will be. Tina is the girl that often is meek -having lived a life mostly controlled by her mother- but she also learns to stand up for her own.
Chris and Tina form an odd couple and both have their peculiarities. Tina likes to spice up their nights in the caravan wearing sexy knitted underwear, while Chris lives by some sort of rules that is hard to understand but if you break them it you're done for! The couple shares the same issues as a lot of other couples do when going on a camp trip for the first time: the arguments, worries, doubts and nights of passion are all there but all with an odd touch. All the places and landmarks they visit are real and while they don't play a big role in this film in a subtle way these places make it even a little more absurd.

Black comedy at its best

This film shows at its heart a couple on vacation where especially Tina is trying to make the best of it, keeping the relationship together while Chris keeps focus on the trip itself, making sure nothing will disrupt his dream vacation with his girlfriend. It shows their love, doubts and problems they run into as a couple and in between all of that some people die.
Even being an odd couple Alice Lowe and Steve Oram give an outstanding performance and Wheatley maneuvers the film nicely from recognizable irritation to some gruesome deaths. Using some typical British humor while zooming in on the camping life of Great Britain Wheatley, Lowe and Oram created a great piece of black comedy.

Official site: Sightseers