20 Times Directors You Trust Totally Let You Down

The Director:

Ben Wheatley is one of Britain's best independent filmmakers. He's behind various popular films, including Sightseers and A Field in England, but the crown jewel of his filmography is his brilliant cult horror film Kill List.

The Film:

There's something pretty worrying happening with Ben Wheatley. Free Fire is a terrible movie (ignore the overly kind Rotten Tomatoes score) but the director's preceding film, High-Rise, is even worse. On both these occasions, this is when he was given a bigger budget and more famous cast. Is he starting to sell out?

High-Rise might be worse, but High-Rise has strong visuals and thus Wheatley is the film's saving grace. However, his direction of this feature-length shootout is awful. It's all over the place and truly head-ache inducing - it frequently looks like he sent the cameras running around the warehouse on skateboards.

For such an acclaimed cult filmmaker, Free Fire is a very amateurish effort. Often directors are able to retain their eye for style even when burdened with terrible scripts, but not so here.

Has He Bounced Back?

This was his most recent film, so this isn't applicable. He's currently developing a film called Freakshift, which will hopefully be a return to form.