'Sightseers' is a British black comedy thriller film directed by Ben Wheatley and is written by and stars Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, with additional material from Amy Jump. The film has been selected be screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.
Plot
Chris (Steve Oram) wants to show Tina (Alice Lowe) his world and he wants to do it his way – on a journey through this sceptred isle in his beloved caravan. Tina's led a sheltered life and there are things that Chris needs her to see – the Crich Tramway Museum, the Ribblehead Viaduct, the Keswick Pencil Museum and the rolling countryside that separates these wonders in his life. But it doesn't take long for the dream to fade. Litterbugs, noisy teenagers and pre-booked camp sites, not to mention Tina's meddling mother, soon conspire to shatter Chris's dreams and send him, and anyone who rubs him up the wrong way, over a very jagged edge.
Production
The characters came together seven years before the film came out as Lowe and Oram swapped stories based on their common background and childhood holiday experiences. However, the pitch kept getting turned down for being too dark, so they put it online and Lowe sent the link to Edgar Wright, who she had worked with on Hot Fuzz. Wright greenlit the project, so Lowe and Oram did more research and took a caravanning holiday to the locations that would go on to be featured in the film. Ben Wheatley has said that all the locations were very helpful, even after they explained the nature of the film, because they "tried to make sure that it was open and fair to places, and that they weren’t the butt of jokes."
The two were also inspired by Withnail and I.
Reception
The critical reception has been good, with review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes giving it a rating of 88% based on 34 reviews.
Peter Bradshaw reviewed the film twice for The Guardian, first after its preview at Cannes, when he suggested "Wheatley could be suffering from difficult third album syndrome: this is not as mysterious and interesting as Kill List; its effects are more obvious and the encounters between the naturalistically conceived antiheroes and the incidental, sketch-comedy posh characters is a little uneasy. By the end, I got the sense that in terms of character and narrative the film was running out of ideas – just a bit." However, he looked at it again on its theatrical release and admitted that "when I first saw it, I think I might have got out of bed the right side" going on to say "a second viewing has further revealed just how superb are the effortless performances of Steve Oram and Alice Lowe, who are the movie's writers (working with Wheatley's longtime co-writer Amy Jump), and whose creative ownership makes a purely auteurist comparison with Kill List slightly less relevant." He suggests a number of parallels: "an obvious comparison with Mike Leigh's Nuts in May, and there are even traces of Victoria Wood and Alan Bennett, whose gentler, observational comedy is turned into something nightmarish, bringing in an exquisitely horrible Readers' Wives aesthetic", concluding that "[t]he chilling and transgressive flourishes are carried off with deadpan confidence; it's a distinctive and brutally unsettling piece of work"" Kim Newman wrote in Empire magazine that Sightseers is a "uniquely British blend of excruciating comedy of embarrassment and outright grue, not quite as disorientating in its mood shifts as Kill List but just as impressive a film." The Guardian asked an editor of Caravan Magazine for his opinion and he thought the film, which he described as "absolutely brilliant", accurately captured the details of caravanning holidays.
Review
'Sightseers', Hitchcock meets Leigh in grisly, giggly horror
A killer in a cagoule? That is the unlikely but alluring prospect held out by Sightseers, a comedy of manners in which murder arrives out of the great blue yonder, usually in the vicinity of a caravan park.
Director Ben Wheatley has in a very short time established himself as an auteur of the domestic macabre, somewhere between Joe Orton and The Wicker Man. This latest isn't as funny as his brilliant debut Down Terrace or as disturbing as his occult thriller, Kill List, but it features many of his signature touches and sets him apart as a film-maker of exceptional talent and daring.
Involved in the writing of the earlier films, Wheatley here directs from an original script by Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, with additional material by his partner Amy Jump. Lowe and Oram also take the lead roles of Tina and Chris, two thirtyish introverts who have just got together.
independent.co.uk
'Sightseers', Hitchcock meets Leigh in grisly, giggly horror
A killer in a cagoule? That is the unlikely but alluring prospect held out by Sightseers, a comedy of manners in which murder arrives out of the great blue yonder, usually in the vicinity of a caravan park.
Director Ben Wheatley has in a very short time established himself as an auteur of the domestic macabre, somewhere between Joe Orton and The Wicker Man. This latest isn't as funny as his brilliant debut Down Terrace or as disturbing as his occult thriller, Kill List, but it features many of his signature touches and sets him apart as a film-maker of exceptional talent and daring.
Involved in the writing of the earlier films, Wheatley here directs from an original script by Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, with additional material by his partner Amy Jump. Lowe and Oram also take the lead roles of Tina and Chris, two thirtyish introverts who have just got together.
independent.co.uk
'Sightseers' began life as a short film made by Lowe and Oram with director Paul King (The Mighty Boosh). Intended as a teaser for a TV comedy series, it was well received but deemed too dark. Fortunately director Edgar Wright saw its potential as a feature film, and put the actors in touch with Big Talk Productions, who made Wright’s own films Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007).
Ben Wheatley was approached to direct after the critical success of his debut feature Down Terrace (2009), a micro-budget crime drama laced with dark humour. He committed to the project while working on his follow-up, the audaciously bleak horror film Kill List (2011).
Since its world premiere at Cannes in May, 'Sightseers' has enjoyed widespread acclaim on the international festival circuit, receiving awards for best actress (Lowe) and screenplay (Lowe, Oram and Amy Jump) at the 45th Sitges Film Festival. The film received its UK premiere at the 56th BFI London Film Festival, and has subsequently been nominated for seven BIFAs, including best director for Wheatley, and best British independent film.
Box office
The film’s critical status meant a wider distribution than most films with this kind of budget (very low/unknown) and genre mix – through the European ‘major’ StudioCanal. However, despite the generally very good reviews, audiences have not been large and it's doubtful that the film has gone much beyond the core horror fanbase and those who follow the more cultish end of the British independent film scene.
'Sightseers' opened very strongly on 92 screens but then tailed off quite dramatically by its third weekend, suggesting that word of mouth was not so good. Nevertheless it has managed over £1,000,000 so far which is acceptable for a UK cinema release and bodes well for a subsequent life on DVD.
More here
'Sightseers' opened very strongly on 92 screens but then tailed off quite dramatically by its third weekend, suggesting that word of mouth was not so good. Nevertheless it has managed over £1,000,000 so far which is acceptable for a UK cinema release and bodes well for a subsequent life on DVD.
More here
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