There have been some very strange movie plots over the years – Greek muses open a roller rink: Xanadu, Norwegian deer farmers catch evil Father Christmas: Rare Exports, Michael Jackson impersonator falls in love with Marilyn impersonator on an Irish island commune: Mister Lonely and now Sightseers – two sociopaths fall in love and murder their way through the British country side on a caravan getaway..
The oddity lies is in the very ordinariness they first posess, the banal conversations, the skeevy awkward sex, the pitstops at a tram museum and a pencil museum.
What starts as a quietly comic look at the small lives of Tina, living at home with her passive aggressive mother, and Chris, his cuddly nerd exterior hiding the dark controlling man beneath, turns into something quite bloody by the end..
The characters are truly intriguing whole human beings not plot contrivances to move the story along, they are not easily described and their responses are not predictable.
He has his own rigid world view and is murderously confused and angry when it is not adhered to.
She at first seems a naive bystander but she is drawn to the power she sees in his actions and finds a power of her own – threatening the almost playful equillibrium that existed between them.
The murders themselves, whilst graphic, are also undeniably humourous, and that darkly comic tone permeates the entire film, leading you effortlessly from laughing out loud at this couple’s pot pourri coital pairings and arguments over whose kills are better, to feeling horrified at the matter-of-fact murders and the utter lack of empathy or remorse.
Two more self-absorbed people you’re less likely to meet and these characters are played perfectly by Alice Lowe and Steven Oram who seem to revel in every delicious Bon Mot of dialogue.
Lowe, who also wrote the script, is particularly wonderful in this role of manipulative sad-sack Tina, you almost applaud her ploy for independence from her mother and staid life until you realise the price to be paid for it.
This is a very English film, from the black humour, to the everyday dialogue and the non-glamour of the whole affair which seems a particularly British affectation.
you either enjoy that sort of film or you don’t.
The kills are not shied away from but it’s a more subtle horror at work here – that of the possibility of this happening, the fact that it could…
This is a film full of people it’s hard to like but easy to watch, a film thats hard to embrace but easy to recommend, hard to pigeon hole but easy to summarise.
Sociopaths on a caravan holiday?
Sure, why not.
7.5/10
theresalwaysacat 