In the beginning, there was Down Terrace, as it and Kill List were available on Netflix and still are as of this post. The two couldn't be more radically different in tone. I can best describe Down Terrace as a dark comedy, whereas Kill List is simply dark. And it could be argued both are family dramas. But the former is about freshly-released bumbling paranoid criminals seeing out their betrayer while the latter is about a hitman with a wife and kid who gets increasingly violent and paranoid. Down Terrace still has its share of violence but they are mostly quick cut. Man is killed with hammer. On to the next scene. Kill List, however, seems to linger on those moments. Man is killed with hammer. Killer keeps swinging.
Of the two, Down Terrace is the easier to recommend because it's lighter. It deals with heavy subject matter, sure, but it doesn't sit with you quite like Kill List does because it provides you plenty of humor to keep the tone light and amusing. These aren't the hardened professional criminals they want folks to believe they are; they're too clumsy for that. Kill List, on the other hand, is unrelenting. That made me feel like I watched Straw Dogs for the first time. A claustrophobic conclusion that is one of the more disturbing endings to a movie I can think of.
And yet, I wanted more. Not more of the unrelenting cold of Kill List, but more of Wheatley's work. What else could he do? A period piece? Surely, you jest. But he did one, and it doesn't feel much like a period piece at all. Yes, everybody's costumed up in 17th-century garb, and there's a certain way some characters speak that reminds you this takes place more than a few years ago, but there seems to be more going on than in another period piece like, say, this year's Great Expectations. Maybe it's the mushrooms most of the characters are force-fed that gives it that different feel. And an esoteric ending that I'm still working out.
Sightseers is more straightforward: a couple go RV-ing across England. But the man is a serial killer and the woman starts to open her mind to her partner's criminal tendencies. It's a funny movie, more so than the rest of Wheatley's work, including Down Terrace. But like the rest, it's dark. People die, and they don't go in funny ways. One does, but it's funny from a point of irony but little more.
It's impossible to ignore the body count in each one of Wheatley's movies. The highest is Kill List's (go figure), but in each of the movies there are at least four deaths. It's not surprising given that each of the films focus on criminals. Ben Wheatley could also be obsessed with death or it's an easy way to commit dramatic action to film or print, but either way the body count is as consistent as his casting of Michael Smiley in each movie:
Structurally, each of the films are divided into distinctive chapters. It's most explicit in Down Terrace and Kill List, as each is split up by days of the week and people on a kill list, respectively. But the dismantling remains in Sightseers and A Field in England as well. Each location that the couple visits in Sightseers is established with a shot of the RV pulling onto a road towards a museum or campground, almost as if the signage on the road are the titles introducing the next sequence. A Field in England's approach is perhaps the most peculiar in that there are a few moments when the cast are frozen as if posing for a painting. Some of them are frozen in an action, while others are posed unnaturally. Each time this happens seems to introduce a significant scene. It's different, and it's easily one of my favorite things about that film.
It could be that criminal element that drives me to watch Ben Wheatley's movies. After all, criminals are fun to watch. But what impresses me most about his body of work is that, despite the shared elements, each of these movies could not differ more. I look forward to whatever he's got next just to see where he goes. And to keep count of the deaths.
