Ben Wheatley

News, Reviews & Features

Review: Rebecca is an uninspired case of diminishing returns

Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 26th October 2020

Here are a couple of film facts you can use to impress your TikTok audience: Die Hard is a Christmas movie, and John Carpenter's The Thing is a remake. Wait, one of the most awesome movies ever is a copy of another film? Well no, not exactly: Carpenter took an old story and improved it, adding his own ideas and explosions, and generally raising everything up a notch. Okay, so what's your point? That it is possible to create legitimate new art from old art. Oh right, is it worth obsessing over? Not really. Are you going to anyway? Yes, after this dab.

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Review: Happy New Year, Colin Burstead is all drama, no fireworks

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 18th October 2018

No one has ever had a good New Year's Eve party. It has never happened. Not once in the entire history of years ending has anyone ever satisfyingly celebrated this annual acknowledgement of time's passage. You might think you had a great NYE party once, but really it was just you having a good night with friends that just happened to occur on 31st December and coincidentally ended with some backwards counting. New Year's Eve did nothing to contribute to your fun. New Year’s Eve parties are always, to some degree, crushing disappointments, because the occasion itself is too much pressure for our species to handle; we are fundamentally ill-equipped to properly mark it with the right sense of importance. We are all too bogged down in stupid, normal human shit to ever go wild to the degree that NYE deserves. We still end up spending half the night in the kitchen, munching on hula hoops and taking it in turns to ask each other "So how's work?". We're all too pedestrian for New Year's Eve. And now Ben Wheatley has captured this exact feeling of rote celebration, but through the eyes of a dysfunctional family. A dysfunctional family that also happen to be a bunch of complete and utter Bursteads.

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LFF 2016: Free Fire

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 16th October 2016

Remember that sequence in Spaced, where Tim gets out of a bind by initiating a pretend shootout with finger guns, safe in the knowledge that no one in the near vicinity can resist joining in? Ben Wheatley's new trigger-happy triumph plays out exactly like that, complete with stylised slow-mo, only with real guns, real bullet wounds and with it all carrying on for a real long time.

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A Field In England

Movie Review | Neil | 4th July 2013

I don't like mushrooms. Never have. I don't trust 'em. They taste weird, they look weird, they've got the texture of an internal organ and they're responsible for one of the worst puns ever. I therefore approached Ben Wheatley's new film, A Field In England, as some kind of aversion therapy. Perhaps the mushroom consumption for which the film is already known would persuade me that it's possible to eat a fungus and still have a good time? Sadly it didn't quite work out that way. I had a good time, but now not only am I terrified of mushrooms, I've also developed an unhealthy fear of fields, tents and Michael Smiley.

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A series of silly questions about A Field In England with Ben Wheatley

Movie Feature | Ali | 2nd July 2013

It occurred to me earlier this week that A Field In England was due out on Friday and that we hadn't done very much on it, save for gawping at the poster. Remembering that I still had director Ben Wheatley's email address from the last time I interviewed him, I fired off a request, expecting him to be busy on a press tour or something. About two minutes later Ben replied, requesting I give him a call instead ("I just did an email interview for someone else and it took me all fucking morning"). I called him. Here's what happened.

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Interview: Steve Oram, co-writer and co-star of Sightseers

Movie Feature | Matt | 25th March 2013

Sightseers is released on DVD and Blu-ray today! This is excellent news because 1) It is a fantastic, wonderfully dark and brilliantly funny film that everyone should own, and 2) it has given us another opportunity to tell you that it is a fantastic, wonderfully dark and brilliantly funny film that everyone should own. Helping us out with that last task is Steve Oram, who makes up a sizable portion of the talent pool that spawned this magnificent movie and who allowed me to interview him to mark the film’s release.

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Ben Wheatley doesn't fuck about

Movie News | Luke | 7th December 2012

With Sightseers only just in cinemas, here's the first poster for Ben Wheatley's next; English Civil War folksy treasure hunt horror A Field In England. (Via Mr and Mrs Wheatley's blog)

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Win a Sightseers poster, but not the one that we're on

Movie Competition | Matt | 27th November 2012

Did we mention that our name appears on the new Sightseers poster? ‘Cos it does. We’re giving away signed copies of a different poster, mind, but you can see our one up and around tube stations everywhere (in London). And spotting our name while out and about is surely just as heartwarming as winning this competition, isn’t it?

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#LFF2012: Sightseers

Movie Review | Ali | 21st October 2012

"If I'm not back in 20 minutes... come and rescue me," says Kill List's protagonist Jay to his hitman partner Gal, as he enters a warehouse housing the unsuspecting pervert behind unimaginably sick snuff films, preparing for a bloodbath. We wait with Gal in the car as 20 excruciating minutes pass. Shit. Eventually, fearing for his friend, Gal reluctantly takes his gun and sidles slowly into the building, anticipating death around every corner. We hear horrible sounds interrupt excruciating periods of silence as Gal gets closer to seeing his worst fears realised. Finally, Gal swoops around the corner ready to confront whatever horrors await, only to find Jay – hammer in hand, covered in blood from his still- twitching victim, happy as a pig in shit – staring back at him. Beat. "Was that 20 minutes?"

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Interview: Kill List director Ben Wheatley gets a grill list

Movie Feature | Ali | 31st August 2011

I messaged director Ben Wheatley on Twitter if he'd mind doing an email Q&A about his ace new film, Kill List. He agreed. Read the interview and the amazing true story of our blossoming friendship below.

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