In the category of “hidden gems”, I’m highly recommending Timestalker, a British comedy by Alice Lowe, who we will talk about later.
Timestalker stars Lowe, Jacob Anderson, Nick Frost, Tanya Reynolds, Aneurin Barnard, Kate Dickie, and Dan Renton Skinner. They are not huge names, but are known here in the UK. Lowe is the writer-director and I like her work.
The Story
Timestalker is a romcom, with a twisted sense of humor. The story is:
The hapless heroine Agnes reincarnated every time she makes the same mistake: falling in love with the wrong man.
We meet Agnes (Lowe) in the Middle Ages, she lives a dull life, and the only thing she looks forward to hearing from the local preacher. He’s a heretic, gets arrested, and is going to be publicly executed.
When his heretic mask is removed, Agnes finds him the most handsome man she’s ever seen. She runs to save him, trips over the dog, and falls, headfirst, into an axe. Having a twisted sense of humor, I laughed at this a lot.
The rest of the movie is about how Agnes’ lives are intertwined with Alex (Barnard), the preacher. The poor woman goes through a lot to try and make it work between her and Alex. It rarely works out.
The Cast
I love Lowe’s work. I first saw her in Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place, which is a brilliant TV series about B-Movie horror. It was the first thing I saw Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry in.
Back to Lowe. She’s acted in some of Ben Wheatley’s early movies, like The Kill List and Sightseers, on which she was also a writer. Over the years, she’s proved herself to be a great writer and director.
Here, in Timestalker, the direction is perfect. There’s nothing overly fancy, as it’s about the story and the actors. I’m always impressed with directors that act in their own work. Lowe is great in this, both with her sense of comic timing and with the different versions of Agnes she plays throughout time.
It’s always nice to see Nick Frost, who plays the antagonist in Timestalker. He is basically the guy that Agnes has to settle for because she can’t get Alex. Is Agnes the stalker or is Geroge (Frost)?
Black Comedy
There isn’t enough dark comedy these days. I liked how Timestalker reminded me of Deadpool. Deadpool says that his first movie is a love story, Timestalker is a love movie but, with a dark twist.
Are people destined to be together throughout their lives? What if you fall in love with the wrong person? There are so many layers to this movie, it’s one of those that I’m going to think about a lot after.
There are some gruesome kills in it, but they are mostly played for laughs. The opening kill kind of shocked me, but that passed as I laughed before the actual death. We need more comedy like this.
Overall
Timestalker isn’t going to be to everyone’s taste. It’s not a huge-budget movie with A-listers, but it is a quirky dark comedy featuring a talented group of actors. I would say it’s a good date movie, but only as long as your date has a good sense of humor. It’s not exactly the latest from *insert female lead* and *insert male lead*, where they spend 2 hours falling in love.
This is about falling in love, but with the wrong person, over and over. It reminded me of Groundhog Day, but set over several lifetimes, not just one day. If you fancy something a little different, give Timestalker a chance. I really liked it.
Timestalker is streaming on Prime Video.
