Time-Crossed Love is Messy Business in 'Timestalkers'

By Seth Freilich | Film | March 15, 2024 |

By Seth Freilich | Film | March 15, 2024 |

Actress Alice Lowe (2016’s Sightseers) made her writing/directing debut with 2016’s Prevenge. In this clever but disappointing horror-comedy, a mother’s unborn child motivates her to go on a killing spree. In her follow-up Timestalker, we find Lowe’s Agnes in a reincarnation rom-com, which slowly loses the “rom.” Although the film has its flaws, it’s an improvement over her debut and, perhaps more importantly, it’s a firm statement that Lowe intends to keep it weird with her projects. Introducing the movie at SXSW 2024, Lowe called the film “a crazy dream” that was also admittedly a “vanity project.*” Both are very true, to the benefit and detriment of the final project.

*If you want to understand Lowe’s sense of humor, just read her next comment being delivered with a sarcastic dryness - “Woody Allen kind of gave [vanity projects] a bad name … maybe that’s not the only bad thing he did.”

Over the course of several centuries covered by the film, we encounter different versions of Agnes, each of which follows a broad strokes pattern - she is lost and discontented until running into a new version of Alex (Aneurin Barnard, Dunkirk). It is unclear whether Alex remembers Agnes, but Agnes always seems to eventually remember that she believes Alex to be the “love of my lives.” Each time, a few others keep showing up as well - Agnes is typically friends with Meg (Tanya Reynolds, Sex Education), George (a mostly very serious mode version of Nick Frost, Shaun of the Dead) is there as an oppressor, and Scipio (Jacob Anderson, Game of Thrones) is typically a servant. After meeting Alex anew, Agnes’ life tends to go a bit off the rails as she tries to make this time the time that her true love sticks. Each time period typically ends with hilarious, riotous blood.

The moments of violent comedy hit pretty much every time and speak to what works best about the film, which is the humor. That humor sometimes runs very broad and blue (the phrase “dildo in a birdcage” may be one of the best film review notes I have ever taken), while at other times it is both biting and exceedingly resonant whether set in 1600s Scotland or 1980s NYC. Lowe is a capable comedic actor, and her writing and direction showcase her knack for timing and pacing as well (the way in which our first introduction to Agnes in 1688 ends is the kind of laugh best enjoyed with a packed audience). Highlighting the vanity project aspect of the film, the rest of the cast mostly only get to dabble in the humor side of things, but they make the best of it. It’s particularly great to see Reynolds and Anderson get to further remove themselves from their television roles. On the flip side, while Frost plays the miserable George well, seeing at least a little of his lighter side would have been nice.

In fact, the film mostly goes off the rails in the final act, and much of that concerns the inexplicable direction Lowe takes George. There is a clear character arc for Agnes over these timelines that does not entirely work, but you can at least see it and, more importantly, understand Agnes’ motivations. In the last few iterations of George, we see that his actions were inexplicable to me, and it was either a form of intentional absurdist humor that did not work or that Lowe and company simply missed the mark. While that leaves a slightly bitter taste in the mouth, it does not mean the movie is bad per se. It’s just a bit of a mess, a movie where the parts are definitely more than the sum. And that’s ok. I did not walk out any less of a Lowe fan, and to the contrary, I just hope it will take less than eight years for her next film.

Timestalker had its world premiere at SXSW 2024.