First Look At 'Kill List' Director Ben Wheatley's 'Sightseers'

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by Benjamin Wright
January 25, 2012 10:22 AM
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While Ben Wheatley’s grim and disturbing “Kill List” isn't exactly an awards season kind of movie (though it did earn some nods from the British Independent Film Awards) this low-key British thriller has propelled the director onto many cinephile lists of rising directors to watch. One of those cinephiles, in fact, and a director in his own right, is “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” maestro Edgar Wright who’s executive-producing Wheatley’s next directorial effort “Sightseers,” which we first heard about during the summer. At the beginning of January, Wheatley told us he had a cut ready to show Wright at his Big Talk production house, and now we have a first official look of the film for ourselves.

Empire has the first official image from “Sightseers,” which Wheatley told us is "a bit like 'The Honeymoon Killers,' but based around camping,” and is likely to premiere at SXSW this year. The image gives us our first glimpse of acting and writing duo Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, who play Tina and Chris, a couple on their first big camping trip together that get tangled up in a murder plot. The first image looks as if it could’ve been taken out of a Kelly Reichardt film like “Wendy & Lucy” or more specifically “Old Joy,” but we’re sure things are going to be far more twisted and disturbing under the surface. After all, it’s Ben Wheatley.

As for anyone looking to compare Wheatley’s latest with his much beloved “Kill List,” he has some encouraging words regarding the nature of this film, stating, simply, to Empire “"It's not as dark as ‘Kill List.' I'd have to shoot a child in the head live on television to be darker than that, but it has the same humor and the same worldview. But it's also quite romantic, a bit more of a love story."

We’re pretty sure Wheatley is playing coy, but we’ll just have to wait and see when SXSW rolls around in March.

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