"“Although funny in parts, I couldn't help feeling somewhat underwhelmed...”"

Given the success of Sightseers on this year's festival circuit – with well-received showings at both Cannes and Toronto – and not to mention the brilliance of director Ben Wheatley's previous feature Kill List – big things were to be expected of his follow-up feature, and although funny in parts, I couldn't help feeling somewhat underwhelmed.

The writers – Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, who play the lead roles Tina and Chris respectively, are a newly formed couple, as two misfits who although previously unlucky in love, have found one another and decide to go away for their first vacation; on a caravan holiday in the North of England, despite Tina's reservations in leaving her hypochondriac mother at home. 

Following a dispute with a litterer early on, the ill-mannered man soon comes to a rather gory fate, as he is “accidentally” run over by Chris. With blood on his hands, it seems such an incident is only spurring Chris on to kill more innocent bystanders, as this supposedly tranquil holiday turns into a bloodbath as the pair start murdering anyone who gets on their wrong side.

Although bearing a rather daft story – that of two people mercilessly murdering innocent civilians – Sightseers would benefit from taking a more intelligent approach, as the film appears to lack in any real point or sense of poignancy at the heart of it. We need a message of sorts, something to tie this entire story together but it's lacking somewhat, remaining just a quite silly, gory film.

Of course Sightseers is just a bit of fun, but I can't help but feel that Wheatley has missed the opportunity in really getting into the heads of such heartless criminals. This could be a dark and distressing study of their fragile minds as we delve into what makes someone a serial killer, which given the dark, bleakness of Kill List, I had been expecting. Instead it feels like more of a cop out, just playfully gory rather than heading down the more psychological route. It may sound harsh to expect this of such a film, but Sightseers isn't consistently funny enough to classify this film as a comedy feature which leaves it open for other paths to be explored. The use of gory deaths as a source of humour does become tiresome after a while.

However despite the negatives, there are various aspects to Sightseers that do work well, in particular the wonderful atmosphere and the 70's inspired mise-en-scene, enhancing the sentiment that such parts of the world are somewhat behind the times, with a definite nod by way of Mike Leigh's Nuts in May. The great British outdoors works as a wonderful setting to this feature, as the beauty of the landscapes combined with vast wilderness makes for an idyllic yet chilling ambience.

The performances from both Lowe and Oram are brilliant also, and I like how we play on their normality early on, as they appear as two nice, ordinary people, which then magnifies their mental instability later on. However they do cleverly implement the occasion glimpse of lunacy in the early stages, meaning that when they do start their killing spree it doesn't seem completely unrealistic as the signs had been showing.

Sightseers remains an enjoyable watch, and if worst comes to worst, there is always the Sightseers “who's going to be brutally murdered next?” game, as predicting who will be the next victim of a Chris or Tina attack is brilliantly fun, if a little easy.