Timestalker review: "A deliciously offbeat paranormal comedy from Alice Lowe"

Writer/director/star Alice Lowe follows 2016’s Prevenge with another bold, challenging, and pleasingly bonkers comedy. This one is a 'reincarnation rom-com' in which her character Agnes repeatedly falls for the same bloke, Alex (Aneurin Barnard), over the centuries. 

The kicker is that he’s shallow and uninterested in her, but she won’t take no for an answer, whether they’re in Victorian England or '80s New York. Each time, she suffers an untimely demise, before the same characters are reincarnated with her around a century later.

Nick Frost is George, an abusive husband in one era, a stalker in another. Jacob Anderson’s Scipio is a servant, a pop star’s manager, and more. And Tanya Reynolds plays Meg, the most sympathetic recurring character, who’s in love with her self-centred, deluded friend Agnes (who mistakenly thinks she’s the smarter of the pair).

Timestalker has something to say about romantic obsession: like a teenager, Agnes is slow to learn from her mistake of idolizing an unsuitable pretty boy. It’s also a neat switch on gender norms in Hollywood comedies past, to which Lowe has fun paying tribute: the '80s will be familiar to fans of everything from Working Girl to Back to the Future.

But there is nothing Hollywood about Timestalker, filmed in Wales, full of British talent, and peppered with Lowe’s bawdy humour. While not all of the jokes will land universally, some of the sharpest refer to Agnes’ sex drive, whether in reference to Victorian dildos or to a put-down that’s hopefully firmly consigned to history: "Keep your knickers on!"

Timestalker is released in UK cinemas on October 11. 

For more, check out our guide to upcoming movies.