'Timestalker’s Inspired Comedy Is a Thoughtful Revision of Time-Hopping Romance

For a while, Timestalker is about as romantic as you can make a film with the word “stalker” in its title. Charting an odyssey of one-sided infatuation, Timestalker comes from deadpan royalty Alice Lowe, who has been involved in a good dozen British comedy classics this millennium. Lowe has worked with Edgar Wright, Ben Wheatley, Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, Paddington director Paul King, lent her West Midlands comedic chops to Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, Lockwood & Co, The Mighty Boosh, Horrible Histories, Black Books, Black Mirror, Flowers, Sherlock, and has taken on senior creative duties for modern indie genre fare like Prevenge and Sightseers.

Those last two films came out eight and 12 years ago, respectively; her sophomore effort as director, Timestalker, isn’t just her most ambitious project yet; it’s long overdue. Lowe is a singular British talent, which shines through in Timestalker’s moments of inspired comedy and thoughtful revision of time-hopping romance. However, this also means the film she writes, directs, and stars in should probably have a greater sense of energy and command of craft.

Crossing Virginia Woolf’s Orlando with the recent Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once, Timestalker focuses on Agnes (Lowe), a Scottish Reformation-era peasant who falls for a heretic preacher (Aneurin Barnard) just before she is accidentally cleaved in the head and wakes up in 1790s England, where she’s the kept lady of a brutish Georgian land-owning husband.