As I said in my review of Sightseers, director Ben Wheatley has carved out a niche for creating dark, insanely violent, and comically twisted pictures.  The trailer for his latest film, A Field in England, has been released and provides a captivating expansion of Wheatley’s style.  The movie takes place in England in 1648 and sees a group of deserters captured by an alchemist who forces the men to find a hidden treasure.  However, the search descends into madness as they eat the psychedelic mushrooms from a field.  There’s enough here to let you know it’s Wheatley, although the lack of humor and emphasis on the trippy visuals makes this movie feel more in line with Kill List rather than Sightseers and Down Terrace.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  A Field in England will be released in the U.K. on July 5th in theaters, TV, Blu-ray & DVD, and VOD.  The film will be released in the U.S. via Drafthouse Films.

[This is a re-post of my review from the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival.  Sightseers opens today in limited release.]

With his third film, Sightseers, director Ben Wheatley has clearly defined his wheelhouse. He makes surreal, darkly comic, horrifically violent tales about ugly people doing terrible things. The humor slightly faded in his last film, the twisted thriller Kill List, but Sightseers returns him to the pitch-black comedy of his debut feature, Down Terrace. This time, instead of giving an emotional bubonic plague to the platonic family, Wheatley fiercely savages the banality of relationships growing out of the puppy-love stages and into something serious. For the two lead characters in Sightseers, the relationship grows into something seriously demented and ruthlessly perverse.

With his third film, Sightseers, director Ben Wheatley has clearly defined his wheelhouse.  He makes surreal, darkly comic, horrifically violent tales about ugly people doing terrible things.  The humor slightly faded in his last film, the twisted thriller Kill List, but Sightseers returns him to the pitch-black comedy of his debut feature film, Down Terrace.  This time, instead of giving an emotional bubonic plague to the platonic family, Wheatley fiercely savages the banality of relationships growing out of the puppy-love stages and into something serious.  For the two lead characters in Sightseers, the relationship grows into something seriously demented and ruthlessly perverse.

The first trailer for Kill List director Ben Wheatley‘s dark comedy Sightseers has gone online, and it’s pretty damn nutty.  The film stars Steve Oram and Alice Lowe as a seemingly nice couple who are taking a trip through the British Isles in his Abbey Oxford caravan.  As gleaned in the trailer, the journey soon turns into a killing spree/sex romp, the likes of which you’ve probably never seen before.  An appropriately creepy use of Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” plays over this wondrously weird trailer that makes the film look like a really fun ride. Edgar Wright is an executive producer on the pic, and fans of his work should get a kick out of this hilariously strange story.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer.  Sightseers will screen at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival which runs from September 6 – 16th, and opens in the UK on November 30th.

The first trailer for the horror thriller Kill List has gone online. The film premiered at South by Southwest to an overwhelmingly positive reception, and screened at the Toronto Film Festival to an equally positive reaction. Furthermore, star Michael Smiley recently won Best Supporting Actor at the British Independent Film Awards. Directed by Ben Wheatley, the story centers on a British soldier (Neil Maskell) who returns home to his family and joins an old friend (Smiley) as contract killers. The trailer is a bit confusing and doesn’t give away too much of the story (which is a good thing), but it looks intense as hell. Phil caught the film at TIFF and said the pic makes you feel like you’ve been “chatted up and punched in the face.” It’s safe to say I’m looking forward to this one.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer. Kill List opens February 3rd, 2012.

Director Ben Wheatley was already slowly but surely making a name for himself with 2009′s acclaimed crime/comedy Down Terrace and his most recent effort, Kill List, which hits theaters in the UK and Ireland on September 2nd. This in mind, the buzz surrounding Wheatley will most likely continue to rise going forward as it looks like his next pic, the dark comedy Sightseers, is being executive produced by Edgar Wright at Big Talk Productions.

Wheatley revealed Wright’s involvement in the pic to The Playlist over the weekend at Empire Big Screen 2011. The film, which is written by and co-stars Alice Lowe (Hot Fuzz) and Steve Oram (Wheatley’s aforementioned Kill List), is based on a short film and follows a pair of “psychotic caravaners.” Film4 is also on-board to produce Sightseers alongside Wright/Big Talk with production set to begin around the beginning of October. In addition to working with Wright on Sightseers, Wheatley will also work with Hot Fuzz star Nick Frost and Spaced‘s Michael Smiley in the comedy I, Macrobane. Wheatley says that production on that project will begin next year after Sightseers is in the can.

Drafthouse Films is teaming with Timpson Films, Magnet Releasing, and 26 filmmakers to produce the horror anthology The ABCs of Death.  Each director will be assigned one letter of the alphabet to turn into a short film.  Some of the more notable talent involved Jason Eisener (Hobo With a Shotgun), Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes), Ti West (The House of the Devil), and Srdjan Sapsojevic (A Serbian Film).  The remaining confirmed are Angela Bettis, Ben Wheatley, Banjong Pisanthanakun, Adrian Garcia Bogliano, Ernesto Diaz Espinoza, Bruno Forzani and Héléne Cattet, Gadi Harel, Thomas Malling, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Simon Rumley, Tak Sakaguchi and Yuji Shimomura, Marcel Sarmiento, Timo Tjahjanto, Andrew Traucki, Jake West and Adam Wingard.  The plan is to fill one slot with the winner of a worldwide contest, reminiscent of how Eisener got his start as an amateur filmmaker who landed Hobo With a Shotgun in the fake trailers section of Grindhouse.

Production is scheduled for this June.  The plan is to complete filming exactly 6 months, 6 weeks, and 6 days later in January 2012.  Read quotes from the producers after the jump.