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Except it’s not, and you shouldn’t be fooled. It turns out that Sightseers, like Wheatley’s previous film Kill List (2011), defies easy summary and categorisation. Yes, it does feature a youngish couple going on a camping holiday around Britain, and killing people along the way — but I’m not sure that’s really what it is about. It seems more like an exercise in mood and character: a comedy that makes you feel sick; a horror that makes you laugh; a portrait of two people and the countryside. Hollywood would probably call it ‘low concept’.
One of the things that Sightseers may be about — although I could be wrong — is detail. The opening scenes, which introduce our lovers Chris (Steve Oram) and Tina (Alice Lowe), as well as her vindictive mother (Eileen Davies), are overwhelmed by a background patina of picture frames and mop handles, knitting needles and tablecloths. Later, on the road trip, it’s hard not to notice the windscreen wipers that shudder loudly in and out of view. It’s all so mundane that it makes the eventual murders even stranger. There’s little of the exuberance or twisted glamour of Bonnie and Clyde. This is more killing as a matter-of-fact.
And the detail also helps make the protagonists, as extreme as they are, more credible. Their clothes and their caravan seem lived-in. Their (quite frequent) sex scenes are sweaty and urgent. Indeed, it’s little surprise that Oram and Lowe — who also wrote Sightseers, along with Wheatley’s wife Amy Jump — have been developing these characters for years. They wear them like a second skin.
Another thing that Sightseers may be about — although, again, I could be wrong — is gender. At first, it’s Chris who does most of the killing, with Tina standing by her man, a look of wide-eyed deference across her face. But as soon as Tina starts doing some killing of her own, Chris grows tetchier and more distant. Perhaps his pride has been wounded. Perhaps the female of the species really is more deadly than the male. In any case, it all leads to a punchline, at the very end of the film, that’s too effective to spoil here.
Yet, even with such handholds, Sightseers is a difficult film to tackle. It is relentlessly cynical, which is no bad thing in itself, but it does mean that you have to be in the mood. A typical scene involves a man’s skull being rearranged — and I mean, really rearranged — with a stick, and mostly for laughs. And while this plays funnier on screen than it does in print, it’s still far from heart-warming. Those with nervous dispositions should probably seek out the new adaptation of Great Expectations, also out in cinemas this week. Or rent Toy Story.
And, naturally, Sightseers is also flawed. Its episodic structure is refreshing to begin with, but it soon becomes tired as it settles into a pattern of meet new person, kill them, meet new person, kill them. And it seems to constrain director Wheatley, who really only lets himself go in one exhilarating sequence that cross-cuts a murder with a shamanistic sacrifice, and all to the sound of Vanilla Fudge’s cover version of ‘Season of the Witch’. Only this matches up to the verve of his excellent Kill List.
But I’d still recommend Sightseers, if only because few films are so distinctive. It’s taken decades for us to get a movie that mixes the National Tramway Museum in Crich, Derbyshire, with so much blood and sex. Now that we have one, we should support it.
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