Lorna Irvine declares this new black comedy one of the year's best.
Director Ben Wheatley is fast becoming one of Britain's most prolific directors, having finally broken through with last year's word-of-mouth hit Kill List, and is re-defining the way audiences see genre pieces, with his use of horror, humour and thriller merging to create something as unforgettable as it is difficult to pigeonhole.
For his latest film Sightseers, he has a more unusual influence, certainly in cinematic terms, in the shape of YouTube. He said he has recently got into stupid people doing pointless stunts that fail.
Co-writers and leads Steve Oram and Alice Lowe see the film more as a road movie, in spite of the often mockumentary feel, with Lowe explaining in Film 2012: "We wanted a very British take (on the genre)- obviously, we couldn't escape to the Mexican border, so we thought...Anglesey!"
It is a spin that more than pays off- an absolute triumph. Tina ( Lowe) and Chris (Oram) are a couple in the first few months of their relationship. Tina is a wide-eyed innocent, escaping an over-bearing maternal home. She is utterly captivating; in a similar mode to Sissy Spacek in both Brian De Palma's Carrie (mother issues) and Terence Malik's Badlands (on the run with a killer boyfriend), both extremely vulnerable and hugely irritating. Chris, in contrast, is a gimlet-eyed bear of a man with a ginger beard and a twisted moral compass. When the pair take off on a caravanning holiday across England, Tina discovers the man she thinks she knows and loves has a penchant for killing those whose lifestyles don't chime with his own world view: he is an inverted snob, albeit one with a tendency to smash in skulls. "He wasn't a human being, he was a Daily Mail reader,'' Chris quips, after another body is swiftly offed.
Juxtaposing the horror with deadpan humour is a brilliant device- Wheatley has an eye for the prosaic minutiae of British kitsch, as with co-producer Edgar Wright- an oversized pencil and knitted pink underwear are two wonderful props in standout scenes- before the terrible screams start.
What sets the film apart from standard comedies is the lack of cliché and the fact the storyline doesn't go the way you'd expect.
Ultimately though, the slow reveal is oddly tender and touching, with Tina's moral conscience reflecting both the beauty of the Yorkshire sunsets and the audience's own responses to the killings...even if she is screwed.
One of the finest British film of the last ten years- or I'm a Daily Mail reader.
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