Alice Lowe, one of the writers of the deliciously dark-hearted Sightseers, was previously part of the merry troupe that re-enacts for the educational children’s television series Horrible Histories. Her gleeful second feature as writer-director is Horrible Histories but with sex-toy jokes. That’s a fine elevator pitch.
The multitasking film-maker plays Agnes, a medieval spinster who becomes infatuated with a rogue heretic priest (Aneurin Barnard). She rashly intervenes in his scheduled torture, only to end up with an axe in her head.
The time-travelling heroine then repeatedly falls for the same reincarnated love interest (again played by Aneurin Barnard), only to be kept apart by a gruesome comic death. A second, sinister suitor, played by Nick Frost, chases Lowe’s characters across centuries. Sex Education’s Tanya Reynolds is Agnes’s time-jumping put-upon handmaiden.
Some existences are longer than others. Lowe is run over by a Regency carriage before her Austen-inspired spinster can speak to the object of her affection. Their eyes lock for a moment during a futuristic urban battle that tips its hat towards Walter Hill’s The Warriors.
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Rebecca Gore’s costume designs are as evocative as they are hilarious. Lowe’s 18th-century pink “pouf” could put Marie Antoinette to shame. The star channels Princess Diana during the 1980s while Toydrum provide era-appropriate dream pop. A ruined wedding reception is so spot on that it could have been shot on the set of Bullseye. Picture Sally Potter’s Orlando repurposed as a Blackadder special.
In Prevenge, Lowe’s first feature, a pregnant woman becomes a serial killer at the behest of her telepathic foetus. The gore that followed was rooted in a deeper truth about pregnancy and mental health. Timestalker, similarly, has notes on erotomania. The nature of the crush varies. Barnard, dressed in flaming-red Marc Bolan attire, suggests that Lowe is a deluded fangirl. Unrequited love is seldom so much fun.
Timestalker is in cinemas from Friday, October 11th
