Ben Wheatley’s caravan comedy is funny, nasty and sharply played by Alice Lowe and Steve Oram. The joke gets a little thin, but their shared gift for making resentment sound reasonable keeps it worth the trip.
Ben Wheatley takes the lovers-on-the-run film on a British caravan holiday, which is a useful way of discouraging glamour. Sightseers is a good, sour comedy, carried by two performances that make terrible behaviour seem like an extension of ordinary bad temper. It is also a small joke stretched close to its limit, even at 88 minutes. The pleasure comes from watching Chris and Tina take themselves seriously while the film quietly lets us see how ridiculous they are.
Steve Oram plays Chris with a wounded self-importance that makes every grievance seem, to him, worthy of an audience. We laughed at how seriously he takes his own irritation, then felt uncomfortable about how familiar it was. Alice Lowe gives Tina an equally persuasive ordinariness, and the two actors seem to have habits together rather than merely lines to exchange. Their interest in trivia is especially useful: it gives them something to share besides the screenplay’s need to keep them travelling.
The screenplay by Alice Lowe, Steve Oram and Amy Jump finds its sharpest humour in the difference between the couple’s complaints and their behaviour. These are people who can notice someone else’s bad manners without recognising anything troubling in themselves. That gives the violence an unpleasant plausibility, even when the film is being absurd. The social observation works because the complaints sound familiar, and the dialogue lets us hear their pettiness without labouring the point.
Laurie Rose’s widescreen photography gives the rural landscapes enough space to be enjoyed independently of the couple passing through them. The views make the violence more jarring, and the film wisely avoids making all of Britain look as sour as its holidaymakers. Jane Levick’s production design keeps the caravan holiday recognisable rather than dressing it up as a comic novelty. That ordinary setting matters: the joke would be much weaker if everything around Chris and Tina were already announcing how eccentric they are.
The editing by Ben Wheatley, Amy Jump and Robin Hill is good at allowing a flat response to something horrible to linger. It is an uncomfortable rhythm, but a productive one, because embarrassment gets its chance alongside shock. Jim Williams’s music helps sustain the unease without making the romance feel grander than these two people can support. The timing keeps individual encounters funny, even when the writing starts to repeat itself.
The limitation is repetition. Once the connection between petty resentment and extreme violence is established, some stretches offer another variation when we want the relationship to become more interesting. Alice Lowe and Steve Oram remain watchable, but their characters do not develop enough to make every return to their unhappiness count. Ben Wheatley is right not to ask for easy sympathy, but there are passages when we are simply waiting for the next nasty incident.
Within the murderous-couple genre, the modest holiday and the unshowy performances give Sightseers a character of its own. It has no need to turn its leads into glamorous outlaws, and it is funnier for letting them remain aggrieved tourists. We would recommend it to anyone who likes a black comedy with recognisable people and little concern for good taste. Just do not expect the relationship to become as absorbing as the bad behaviour.
