While England is undoubtedly the target of criticism when it comes to the many facets of its cultural offerings – say cuisine, for example – there’s no denying that the country provides some truly breathtaking natural scenery. It’s equally valid that English people possess offbeat humour and sometimes outright weirdness. In very few movies is this combination as succinctly married as in Ben Wheatley’s 2012 black comedy Sightseers.
Sightseers focuses on the journey of an admittedly odd couple, Chris and Tina, played by Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, respectively, as they take a short holiday through the English countryside in a caravan. However, there’s a darkness to the pair that leads them to commit a series of violent murders, taking their inner turmoil out on a handful of unsuspecting victims.
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Throughout the film, Wheatley details the stranger side of life in rural England, beginning with the rather uncomfortable relationship between its protagonists. Weirdness drips throughout the runtime of Sightseers, whether it be in the sickening nostalgia of Tina’s needy mother or in the violent banality of Chris’ immoral actions, then made all the more bizarre by the pair’s aggressive lovemaking.