Director Ben Wheatley’s 2011 film, Kill List, was such a continually shocking and disorienting melding of disparate genres that it made quite a bit of noise in the movie geek community. Those who took in its inventiveness and depravity couldn’t wait to see what Wheatley would have up his sleeve next, and it turns out what he had is this film, Sightseers, a movie about a new couple (Alice Lowe and Steve Oram) looking to cement their bond by hitching a caravan to a car and going off on a road trip.
Of course, Wheatley being Wheatley, this isn’t just your typical road movie or your typical romantic comedy—it’s also a movie about a killing spree. It all starts when Oram’s character accidentally backs over a littering lout with his caravan, which then creates a sort of breaking bad that develops to the point where the duo start to knock off anyone who annoys them. They’re like a British Bonnie and Clyde, only with a more comedic outlook and worse fashion sense.
Despite the fact that it exists as a strange mix of relationship drama, dark comedy, and nihilist splatterfest, Sighsteers doesn’t pack quite the punch that Kill List did though. It’s a much more grounded movie that relies on character rather than shock to hold your interest, and seeing as Lowe and Oram’s characters are never really relatable or even coherent in their motivations, there are parts of the film that can leave you hung out to dry. It’s still consistently funny, remarkably quotable, and at times uncomfortably awkward though, and Lowe and Oram do manage to anchor the film well with memorable performances, so it’s definitely worth giving a watch at some point. Just make sure you check out Kill List first.
