Sightseers

I was glad that booking this hilarious black comedy at the Melbourne International Film Festival was so worth it.

The story is centered around an odd couple; Chris (Steve Oram); who takes his girlfriend Tina (Alice Lowe) around the British towns of rural England for inspiration for a book he's writing, However their circumstances take unusual turns until things go horribly wrong.

I may of heard about director Ben Weatley's earlier films' but haven't caught up yet. This film however show he's a skilled filmmaker able to bring a promising film like this to viewers of adult comedy.

Sightseers is woefully original, full of witty dialouge, charming characters and some of the best British Black Humour I have seen in a long time if not ever. There's so many laugh out loud moments I just really feel that this film should be given a limited release in Australia. Its was such a great surprise, by far my favourite film of the Melbourne Intrnational Film Festival.

I do highly recommend this gem of recent British cinema.

4/5

When you think of all the millions of dollars invested into epic Hollywood blockbusters, then they turn out to be complete turkeys, you'll be heartened to know that there are still brilliant films being made on a fraction of the budget.

If Lord of the Rings was basically an advert for New Zealand's magnificent landscape, then Sightseers does the same job for the north of England. It's about your 'average' couple as they take their first holiday together, i.e. a romantic caravaning tour of the countryside. However, things soon start taking a turn for the worse and the dead bodies soon start piling up.

I won't go into too much detail about the plot. Some films are better that you know as little as possible about them. All you really need to know about Sightseers is that it comprises of the blackest of comedy around. The humour and tone is very dark indeed. If you think you can laugh at some characters with real human frailties, as they come to terms with each other and how they see life, then you should enjoy this.

It really is a true gem. Sadly Sightseers will never attain the dizzy heights of Hollywood's output, but it really deserves its place as a great British film.

If you fell asleep after watching a double bill of Mike Leigh's Nuts in May and Terrence Malick's Badlands, you might wake up with the idea for Sightseers, the latest film from Ben Wheatley, acclaimed director of Down Terrace and Kill List. Alice Lowe and Steve Oram play Tina and Chris, a couple who head out on a caravan tour of Yorkshire's Peak District, taking in such points of interest as the Crich Tramway Museum, Ribblehead Viaduct and the Keswick Pencil Museum. But Chris harbours a secret: he is a serial killer, with a tendency for sudden, explosive outbursts which result in the violent deaths of random strangers who have crossed, or simply inconvenienced him in some way. When the none-too-bright Tina finally cottons onto the fact that Chris has murdered at least two people since their sightseeing holiday began, she faces a stark choice between returning alone to her overbearing mother, or continuing to accompany her barmy boyfriend on his murderous spree – the option of shopping him to the authorities apparently not occurring to her.

Sightseers was dreamed up by Lowe and Oram as a logical extension of characters they have played on stage for several years, and as a work of character observation, Tina and Chris feel as real as any created by Mike Leigh, using a similar kind of improvisational character workshopping with his repertoire of actors. Here, such is the strength of the principal characters – in particular, Tina's vividly-drawn and expertly-played mother – it feels like a failure of imagination, or even a cop-out, when the killings begin. If this was a throwaway British horror flick like The Cottage or Revenge of Billy the Kid, it wouldn't matter, but Wheatley is clearly capable of delivering something far more incisive than a slasher flick, and would perhaps do well to make a film where nobody gets tortured, mutilated or murdered. After all, it takes a great deal more skill to make films like those of Leigh and Joanna Hogg – writer-director of Unrelated and Archipelago, two achingly painful films about dysfunctional English families on holiday – in which nobody gets killed, but everybody hurts.

The widespread critical acclaim which greeted Wheatley's Kill List, which began like a Mike Leigh film and ended like The Wicker Man, will guarantee that Sightseers will garner a great deal of attention. Horror fans will no doubt delight in the bloody direction Wheatley's black comedy takes, laughing with glee as each new murder is carried out and excused, in increasingly episodic fashion, with diminishing returns, until an ending is suddenly decided upon, seemingly for no better reason than the feature-length clock has run out. On sober reflection, however, even the most ardent Sightseers fan might be given to admit that a lack of bloody murder never hurt Nuts in May, and Badlands wouldn't have been improved by being played for laughs. and, if they're being really honest, that there's nothing much in Sightseers that doesn't feel like warmed-up leftovers from The League of Gentlemen or Nighty Night – except, perhaps, for the enduring symbol of crap British holidays, the caravan.

Tina and Chris on the road. Caravan behind being towed. Incident on a tram. An unfortunate ram. Due to litter incongruously stowed

Tina and Chris on the road. Caravan in front being towed. An unfortunate fall. Calamitous sprawl. The price for being rather high browed

Tina and Chris at the pub. Quiet drink and a spot of pub grub. Over she goes. A splash as she throws. All because of the smallest of snubs.

Tina and Chris on a ramble. A pleasant countryside amble. Ends with a bludgeon. Hefty wooden truncheon. Locking horns with the pair is a gamble.

Tina upfront, Chris in bed. A cyclist appears up ahead. After brakes are applied. There's a body to hide. Road rage satisfied and duly fed.

Tina and Chris sit with Martin. He's unconventional and quite spartan. He'll soon meet his god. In his coffin like pod. But Chris will be irked and disheartened.

Tina and Chris viaduct. Preparing to be jointly plucked. A hell of a ride. The pair side by side. An outstanding black comical construct.

Ben Wheatley provides one of the year's darkest and funniest comedies in this tale of true love, caravans and dead bodies.

Ever since her terrier Poppy died in a bizarre knitting accident, Tina (Darkplace's Alice Lowe) has lived a sheltered life with her mother. New boyfriend Chris (Steve Oram) decides to show her his world and takes her on a self-proclaimed "erotic odyssey" in his caravan to such wonders as the Crich Tramway Museum, Ribblehead Viaduct and, of course, Keswick Pencil Museum. But with litterbug, National Trust snobs and feral youths running rampant, Tina and Chris inadvertently leave a trail of dead bodies in their wake, as their holiday continues to spiral out of control.

Steve Oram heads up the fantastic cast as the muted, yet brutal, Chris, complementing Alice Lowe's awkward, yet creepy, Tina perfectly. However, the real star is the special effects, which provide some of the most realistic and memorable on screen deaths of the year. The unsettling, albeit hilarious, performances of the two leads is mirrored in the soundtrack, a mix of cheery '80s pop songs and a haunting minimalist score.

Shot in the beautiful Lake District, director Ben Wheatley uses lingering shots and slow-mo in an innovative way, making his comedy edgy whilst poignant. No doubt, this is a very British black comedy. Wheatley shows directorial flair, but reigns it in from his previous work Kill List, leading to a much tighter film, with a concentration on the biting wit of the script.

Sightseers, overall, plays out like a cross between Bonnie & Clyde and In Bruges, leading to a perfect pitch-black comedy that's not for the faint hearted.