Sightseers

★★★★

(2012)

Ben Wheatley's third and most very British outing is a markedly lighter affair than his previous kitchen sink killer films Kill List and Down Terrace confidently using sharp humor to counteract its sharp violence. A comedy in blender, borrowing as much from Mike Leigh's wonderful Nuts in May as Terrance Malick's Badlands, Sightseers is as black as night with wonderfully timed and often hysterical performances from its writer/stars Alice Lowe and Steve Oram. The drab mumbling, chain-smoking gangsters of Down Terrance and the sheer intensity of Kill list are missing here but for the better; The director has found a near perfect balance of tone.

The first thing we see in Sightseers is a route being strung across the north of England, with pins and twine, a caravaners plan, highlighted on post-it notes at each stop along the way are the names of some of the UK's finest museums. The Crich Tramway Museum, the frankly fascinating Keswick Pencil Museum and the Ribblehead Viaduct are where Tina (Lowe) is being taken by her new beau Chris (Oram). Once the pair escape the grips of Tina's hideously controlling mother they are soon trundling along the motorways, caravan in tow, and into their holiday but Tina soon starts to work out that there is something seriously amis with her tour guide.

Make no mistake, Sightseers, is a grisly film but Oram and Lowe make the scenes in between the bloodletting a total joy as Tina and Steve begin to unravel ever so slightly. Her love for crotched and crotchless underwear of her own design and his sharp and violent temper are tiny treats along the way but its the pair's blissful love of the mundane and their eventual detachment from the world which turns this into something affectingly sinister and weirdly moving. It's Wheately's best so far but miraculously the film belongs to its pair of very polite sociopathic lunatics purely of Oram and Lowe's creation.