I don’t always mean to force a connection between two unrelated films but there’s no other way for me to praise Alice Lowe’s Timestalker without bringing up Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast. Both movies are darkly comedic time traveling love stories involving stalkers that subconsciously reference the work of David Lynch.
David Lynch has always been a big inspiration, as well, and you can definitely see the inheritance of that in the film - Alice Lowe, Filmmaker Magazine
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| Eraserhead / Timestalker |
There’s a lot more to both movies but those basic similarities combined with the fact that they were both released within a year of each other makes the comparison more than understandable. It’s like when Cronenberg’s Crash and Lynch’s Lost Highway both got released around the same time. Yeah they’re different but on a surface level, they’re both existential hyper-sexual films that sort of focus on automobile-based eroticism. Or, more recently, Fincher’s The Killer and Linklater’s Hitman. both movies are incredibly different but at the same time, it would be weird to not draw some comparison between two new hitman movies where the protagonists screw up big time and have to correct their errors.
I’ve been a fan/defender of Bonello’s work for more than 20 years but I found his time traveling stalker story to be a bit disappointing. I know I’m in the minority on this. Most folks love The Beast. I just thought it kind of lingered on and took forever to come to an end. I appreciate the audaciousness of it all and the subconscious nods to folks like Leos Carax, David Lynch and Maya Deren. But at the end of the day it just didn’t move me (click here to read my thoughts from 2023).
I hate bringing down one movie to prop up another but Timestalker is what everyone thinks The Beast is.
Lowe has compared her own film to Baby Reindeer. Like Timestalker, Baby Reindeer is another UK-based story about a stalker that takes place over a few different time periods. This pairing makes sense but it’s kind of driving me crazy how more folks aren’t making the connection between The Beast and Timestalker. It’s like when Cronenberg’s eXistenZ came out a few weeks after The Matrix. Again - both movies are different but also very similar. Even today, rarely do you see many parallels drawn between the two movies but they’re both “virtual reality” sci-fi stories where characters use their bodies as ports to log in to another dimension. And they both played in theaters at the same time!
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t draw a comparison between Timestalker and one of the most famous time traveling movies of all time: Highlander. Lowe has said herself that outside of folks like Lynch, Powell and Pressburger, etc that she was inspired by a lot of pop culture movies from the 80s.
Timestalker is really influenced by eighties films, which had a fun way of dealing with massive ideas. This boy traveling back in time with his mum fancying him, which was a big mainstream hit! The eighties got away with dealing with complex matters in a light way. I miss that we don't really get to explore these fun and fresh ideas, because we don't get those sort of conceptual films anymore - Alice Lowe, themoviewaffler.com
Recently on twitter Lowe said the similarities to Highlander were not intentional but I couldn't resist making a side-by-side. There’s even a duel scene in both films!
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| Highlander / Timestalker |
I've always been really influenced by Powell and Pressburger - Alice Lowe, Filmmaker Magazine
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| Black Narcissus / Timestalker |
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| The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp / Timestalker |
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| A Matter of Life and Death / Timestalker |
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| Tales Of Hoffmann / Timestalker Normally I don’t like comparing anything to Stanley Kubrick in 2025 because what movie isn’t influenced by him on some level? But Lowe used some of the techniques in Eyes Wide Shut for Prevenge so it isn’t out of line to assume the same techniques were used for Timestalker. I said to the DoP that I found the thematic use of artificial coloured lights throughout Eyes Wide Shut really creepy, and I wanted to try and get some of that - Alice Lowe, BFI
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Timestalker is the story of a perpetually reincarnated woman (“Agnes”) who finds herself falling in love with the same man over and over no matter what time period she finds herself in. It’s easy to read this as a basic female-driven story about finding yourself caught up in a redundant dating loop or falling in love with the same type of men over and over again and having it go nowhere. And that would make sense. I just suspect there’s more. It’s been over 8 years between Pervenge and Timestalker. I can’t help but think this movie is Lowe working through the frustrations of trying getting a film made and be a consistent director. There’s a lot of runaround and disappointment when it comes to getting a film off the ground. Meetings, scraping together budgets & resources, asking favors, etc. At a certain point, low/mid budget filmmaking has to feel like an endless loop much like Agnes finds herself in Timestalker.
It’s best to go in to Timestalker without any preconceived notions of Lowe’s debut. Prevenge is a personal psychological horror about motherhood. Timestalker can’t really be categorized as easily. On one hand it’s a psychological time traveling period drama. But it’s also a dark comedy science fiction story about a stalker sort of being stalked herself. The same dark humor and quick spurts of violence in Prevenge can be found in Timestalker but that’s about it (and even the violence in Timestalker is more gruesome and over the top than in Prevenge). This is new territory for Lowe that she handles masterfully.
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