Sightseers is a black comedy film directed by Ben Wheatley that follows a couple, Chris and Tina, on a murderous caravanning trip through the English countryside. The film combines the "bathetic-bucolic" genre of urban couples encountering trouble in nature with the road trip serial killer genre. It taps into English traditions of the picturesque countryside hiding darkness and the ancient past shaping the present. Wheatley aimed to realistically portray violence to disturb rather than entertain viewers. The film progresses from mild comedy to depicting the "heart of British darkness" as the couple delves deeper into the wild landscape and ancient history of the land.

1. NOVEMBER 2012 VOLUME 22 ISSUE 11
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The Dark Side of Ealing from ‘It Always Rains on Sunday’ to ‘The Ladykillers’
CRUEL BRITANNIA: BEN WHEATLEY’S
The BFI
London Film
Festival
Special
SIGHTSEERS

2. 30 | Sight&Sound | November 2012
PSYCHO
GEOGRAPHYA black comedy about a caravanning trip through northern England that turns
murderous, ‘Sightseers’ – from ‘Kill List’ director Ben Wheatley – taps into a
tradition of urban couples coming horribly unstuck in the English countryside
By Ben Walters
FIGURES IN A LANDSCAPE
‘Sightseers’transplants the
homicidal runaway couple
of US pulp tradition into a
distinctively English setting

3. November 2012 | Sight&Sound | 31
I want to get away, she said, I want to get away.
I’ll take you on a trip, he said, we’ll have a holiday.
We’ll be with Mother Nature and we’ll laugh and
sing and play.
I want to get away, she said, I want to get away.
Candice-MarieandKeithPratt,‘NutsinMay’
There’sastrainoftelevisionandfilmmakingthatmight
becalledBritishbatheticbucolic–asemi-absurdistmode
inwhichsublimenaturallandscapesformthebackdrop
for neurotic urban odd couples getting holidays wrong.
The archetypal instance is Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May, a
1976 edition of the BBC’s Play for Today in which holier-
than-thou quarry-botherer Keith Pratt (Roger Sloman)
and his wife Candice-Marie (Alison Steadman) take in
Dorset’s natural beauty and historical treasures – when
theyaren’tsquabblingaboutschedulesorcarpingonfel-
low campers’ diets. Other examples would include the
histrionic farmhouse farting about of Withnail and I
(Bruce Robinson, 1986) and, more recently, The Trip
(MichaelWinterbottom,2010),inwhichmobileteleph-
onyprovidessomenotablyrudeawakeningsfromdelu-
sionsofRomanticism.
These itineraries have often been punctured by inti-
mations of the dark or grotesque – think of Withnail’s
run-inwiththepoacherorCandice-Marie’sdungeonfix-
ation – but none has been as bloody as that of Sightseers.
WrittenbyandstarringAliceLoweandSteveOram,and
directed by Ben Wheatley, the film follows lovers Chris
andTinaonacaravanningtripfromRedditchintheMid-
landstoSettleinYorkshire,viaatrammuseumhereand
aviaductthere.Thecouplearesociallymaladjustedbut,
we soon realise, not merely that: Chris nurses a variety
ofgeneralisedresentmentsthatheisn’tafraidtoexpress
homicidally,andinTinahehasfoundaneager–perhaps
too eager – apprentice. The resulting feature constitutes
auniqueandprovocativeconfluenceofgenres,infusing
the bathetic-bucolic mode with a grand-guignol vision
ofmurderassocialcritique,allmappedontothequintes-
sentially American frame of a runaway couple’s homi-
cidal roadtrip. Equal parts Nuts in May and Bonnie and
Clyde,then,withspritzesofKindHeartsandCoronetsand
TheLeagueofGentlementhrownin.
Lowe and Oram’s backgrounds are in live and televi-
sion comedy of the outré kind: her small-screen credits
include Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and Little Britain, his
TheMightyBooshandTittybangbang;bothsupportedSte-
veCooganonhislastlivetour.ThepairdevelopedChris
and Tina while performing live, making deadpan
reference to unseen killings, then put them on

4. 32 | Sight&Sound | November 2012
SIGHTSEERS
tapeinthehopeofdevelopingaTVseries.
“We wanted to do it as a sitcom, a bit like Terry
and June, but with killing,” Oram says. The idea, he re-
ports,wasjudged“toodark”forTV,butitwasseenashav-
ing feature potential. Edgar Wright, in whose Hot Fuzz
Lowehadappeared,forwardedtheshorttoproducerNira
Park, whose Big Talk had backed Black Books and Spaced
onTVandShaunoftheDead,HotFuzzandAttacktheBlock
in cinemas. Park also knew Wheatley, who – though
nowbestknownforthecombinationofcharacter-based
socialrealism,unadornedviolenceandblackcomedyhe
brought to the low-budget features Down Terrace (2009)
andKillList(2011)–alsohasaTVcomedypedigree,hav-
ingdirectedepisodesofModernTossandIdealand,earlier,
writtenforArmandoIannucci’sTimeTrumpet.
“BenhadmadeDownTerraceatthatpoint,thoughnot
Kill List, and it seemed like an obvious fit thematically,”
Lowesays.“He’sveryinterestedinshowingviolenceand
how that implicates the audience. That took the film
to the next level – made it more cinematic. We started
thinking of the characters as being more serious: they
had to feel like real people with a real history and a real
psychologyandrealreasons.”
Wheatley still took inspiration from TV techniques,
however. “A lot of the process that I have now has come
fromlookingathowIannucciworkedonTheThickofIt,”
thedirectorsays.“Thatimprovstyle,jumpingbackwards
and forwards between takes, doing takes on the script
andtakesoffthescript.It’salsoinCassavetesandLeigh.”
Not that he’s keen to invite comparisons with Mike
Leigh. Despite numerous connections between Nuts
in May and Sightseers – extensive exterior shooting; an
overbearing man wrong-footed by his initially infantile
partner’s growing confidence; subtexts engaging with
class, economics and authority; the use of branches as
weaponry – Wheatley maintains he only saw Leigh’s
film two weeks before shooting started on Sightseers: “I
went, ‘Ooh, OK. Oh, fuck.’ We changed a lot of stuff to
makesureitwasn’ttoomuchlikeit.Therewasabitmore
ofthemlookingattimetablesandstufflikethatthatgen-
tlydisappeared.”
Thesplendourofourcountrysideisoftenoverlooked.
“It’s totally mind-blowing how expansive and beautiful
England is, and no one realises it because we’re English
andclosedoff,”saysOram.“Whenwestartthefilm,Chris
and Tina are in a very stifling suburban environment,
and just 20 miles down the M1 they’re in this epic land-
scape.”ChrisandTina’sinitialmotivationistoescapethe
disappointing strictures of everyday life. “It seemed to
suit their characters,” Oram says. “It’s an American idea:
‘We’re in control of our own destiny, going out there in
our covered wagon, pushing the boundaries.’ But it’s a
caravan,really,isn’tit?”Gonks,henpartiesandNational
Trustboresareneverfaraway.
Such deflation comes as standard in the bathetic-
bucolic mode, in which characters often have preten-
sionstopost-Romanticnotionsoffruitfullycommuning
with nature. Chris fancies himself as something of a lat-
ter-day Wordsworth, needing only time in the country
andtheattentionsofhismusetocreatehis“oeuvre”,but
weswiftlyrealiseheisincompetenttoexpresshimselfin
any way other than murder – and ludicrously petty-
mindedmurderatthat,failingeventoliveuptotheHol-
lywood template of the revenge-killing spree. “It’s an
American idea, but done in an English way,” Oram says,
“i.e. shit. Tarantino does it and it’s really cool – and then
we come along and we’re wearing cagoules and being
Brummies.”
The steady accretion of low-level practical irritants
and hazards is another familiar tack. “When you’re out
there,”notesWheatley,“yourealisethat200yearsagoit
wouldhavebeenmiserybeinginanyoftheseplacesand
youwouldhavejustdied.Ifyou’rehavingtoliveinthese
environments, it’s tough, it’s harsh, it’s not fun at all. It’s
only recently we can blithely bomb about the place and
go,‘Oh,yeah,it’sgreat,’andthengobacktothecity.”
ULTIMATE HOLIDAY
As a romance with a body count, Sightseers follows the
likesofBonnieandClyde,Badlands,TheHoneymoonKillers
andNaturalBornKillers.DistinguishedfromsuchAmer-
ican forebears by its very English privileging of irony
over iconoclasm and blunt-force trauma over gunfire,
the film nevertheless shares with them an appreciation
oftheliberatingcocktailofnaivetyandsociopathywith
which such sprees are fuelled – a sense of murder as the
ultimate holiday. “It’s coming out of that contract with
society,” Wheatley suggests, “that idea that everything
we’vebeensoldisalie–whichiswhereChrisiscoming
from. And Tina’s got nothing: her world is just a house
she’s trying to get out from. If he’d had another hobby,
she’dprobablyhavegonealongwiththat.”
BothDownTerraceandKillListalsojuxtaposetheEng-
lishcountrysidewithhumanbrutalityinstoriesfocused
on couples for whom murder is a shared pursuit – mod-
ern Macbeths with less troubled consciences. These are
not, Wheatley says, motifs that he consciously repeats.
And, while acknowledging that “it does paint quite a
dark picture of me”, he suspects they are rooted in his
own happy domestic life with partner Amy Jump, who
hadawritingcreditonKillListandtakeswritingandedit-
ingcreditshere.
“Thecouplesthing,Ithink,comesfromAmyandIbe-
ing a couple: we have a couple’s perspective and we’ve
beentogethersincewewere16,soit’salwaysbeenthat,”
hesays.“Alotofthedramain[our]filmscomesfromcou-
ples being strong together rather than couples breaking
apart.PeoplesaidalotaboutKillListthatthecouplewere
in the process of breaking up, but it was never meant to
“Tarantino does
it and it’s really
cool – and then we
come along and
we’re wearing
cagoules and
being Brummies”
Steve Oram

5. November 2012 | Sight&Sound | 33
be like that. They were just shouty – an aggressive cou-
plewhonegotiatedbetweenthemselvesinaheightened
way. [In cinema in general] you often see the drama of
the betrayal and the split, but mostly [for us] it’s couples
workingtowardsagoalandachievingit.”Thegoalgener-
allybeingmurder.“Yeah,butthat’sjustdrama,isn’tit?”
Like his improvisational shooting style, Wheatley
creditshisgruesomebutrelativelynaturalisticapproach
toviolencetoTVinfluences,notablydramasofthe1970s
and80ssuchasThreadsandScum.“It’sdesignedtomake
you upset rather than give you an excuse as a viewer to
thinkit’sOK,”heinsists.“It’sfromtheAlanClarkeschool
whereyoushowitandyougo,‘Thisishorrible.’Scumstill
scaresmenowinawaythatmodernstuffdoesn’t.”
Sightseers sometimes suffers from a certain jarring of
thesecomicandrealistsensibilities:someofthebroader
comedy beats, using outlandish props or gag-based dia-
logue,threatentorendergoriermomentsglib.“Wetried
toreallyfightagainstthat,”Wheatleysays.“Theoriginal
short film was very broad and it was bringing it back
fromthattowardsarealitythat’smorewithintheworld
ofthefilmsI’vemadebefore.Butifyousteertheshipto-
wards comedy, away from horror or drama, then these
thingshappen–everything’saimingtowardsajoke.And
noteverythingisfunnyinlife.”
While Sightseers focuses on Chris’s pseudo-Romantic
yearnings, the film does contain elements of the deeper
English past, the rich, loamy hinterland that also seeps
through the cracks in Down Terrace and Kill List, even if
the cult elements of Kill List lack the thought-through
plausibility of those found in, say, The Wicker Man or
Rosemary’sBaby.AsSightseersprogresses,asenseofunac-
countabilityandwildnessgrows.
“We realised how beautiful the landscape could be,
fromlittlediddyhousesandfieldstolarger,darker,more
tragicscapes–viaductsandstonecircles,monolithicand
ominous,” says Lowe. “As the landscape gets wilder, you
feel you’re going into the past, into a time before cities
and civilisation. The physical journey became the jour-
ney of the film, from sweet and harmless to the heart of
British darkness. Before we learned all these manners
and polite restraint, we were smashing each other over
theheadwithstones.”
Wheatley introduces dashes of psychedelia and what
he calls a “Roeg-y kind of parallel-action weirdness” –
sequences in which rhythmic, associative editing meld
elements of synchronicity, memory and dream in fanta-
sias of lust and death aimed at linking Chris and Tina to
asemi-mythicalpast.“Iseethatweirdschismofmodern
and ancient at the same time,” he says of everyday life,
“andthatcomesthroughinthework.AsIgetolderIno-
ticeitmore.Whenyou’reakid,everythingseemscertain
and you believe the status quo is totally inflexible, but
youonlyneedtobecogentfortenyearsandyouseethat
politicalsystemsrepeat,historyrepeats,everything’sre-
peating all the time. You think, ‘I’m probably the same
asmyselffrom200yearsagoorathousandyearsago.’”
Itshouldn’t,therefore,comeasasurprisetolearnthat
Wheatley’s next project is a period piece that seems
primedtoofferadistillationofhisconcernswithhistory,
landscape,magic,violenceandrestrictivecircumstances:
setduringtheCivilWar,AFieldinEnglandseesagroupof
soldiers mysteriously trapped in a field with apparently
supernatural qualities. He calls it “a prequel to all the
films”hehasmadesofar.
It wouldn’t be cricket to wrap up without touching
on a perennial matter of interest when it comes to the
Englishcountryside.“Peoplegetputoffbytheweather,”
Lowe says. “We tried to make a virtue of that. It could
help you with your acting having sleet in your face. But
itwasmadeeasyforus,inasense,becauseifyou’rewear-
ingpropercampinggearit’sactuallyquitecomfortable.”
When dealing death on ancient earth, a good cagoule
goesalongway.
i
‘Sightseers’is released in the UK on 30 November,
and will be reviewed in the next issue
MAKING A BREAK
Chris (Steve Oram) and
Tina (Alice Lowe) in
‘Sightseers’, above, recall
Candice-Marie (Alison
Steadman) and Keith (Roger
Sloman), below, filming
‘Nuts in May’with director
Mike Leigh, in woolly hat