“It’s probably why we’re all so depressed, to be honest.” Alice Lowe on the commodification of romance and her new movie Timestalker

We speak to Timestalker writer and director Alice Lowe and its cast Nick Frost and Aneurin Barnard about the time-hoping love story.

“I really felt like I’ve got this concept, and I think the audience will be ready for it because we are used to watching sci-fi and Doctor Who, for example,” says Alice Lowe when we sit down to talk to her about her new time-hopping, comedy, horror, romance movie Timestalker.

The movie follows Agnes (played by Lowe, who also writes and directs the movie) through different periods of time as she seems to follow a hopeless loop of falling in love with a man (Aneurin Barnard) only to die soon afterward.

Timestalker follows Agnes (Alice Lowe) through different time periods.

Now, if that sounds like a lot of genres in one movie, you’d be quite right, but Lowe thinks audiences will be up for it. “For me, it’s about not underestimating your audience,” she affirms. “There are lots of very recognised things that we are comfortable watching, even with Eighties high concept things like Back To The Future.”

“I love that fact that in genre, it’s every genre,” adds Nick Frost, who stars alongside Lowe in the movie. “In terms of being the character within that, it’s much nicer for your character to be flawed and frightened and hungry and horny and to be everything, because that’s what human beings are. I think genre does that better than any other genre, really. Your characters can be all of these things at the same time. I think in being that, audiences react more to those characters because that’s what they are as well.”

“It’s about the characters, it’s about the actors,” Lowe agrees. “You can be in a really weird sci-fi environment and be playing a goblin, but if the goblin has identifiable human emotions, then the audience can latch onto that character. That’s what it’s always about. We’re going to be wearing these ridiculous costumes in this crazy environment, but we’re just people, and that’s what the film is about. To me, that says a lot more about the human condition than someone just coming in going ‘I know exactly what I’m doing’.

“Hollywood films always feel that way. I know exactly what’s happening here, and for me, British humour is a bit more like ‘I have no idea what’s going on. What’s happening now?’ To me, that’s funny. It’s also how I feel about life.

“Really, it was more about me convincing the people funding it that this can work and it makes sense.”

Lowe trusts that audiences will understand the high-concept time-hopping theme in Timestalker.

Ah yes, convincing the big wigs. It’s taken seven years for Lowe to make Timestalker, even though her previous film, the comedy horror Prevenge (released in 2016) was a critical hit (read our review here).

Lowe also starred in Prevenge as well as writing and directing it, and for Timestalker, she’s joined by a whole host of British talent including Tanya Reynolds, Jacob Anderson, Nick Frost and Aneurin Barnard, who plays Agnes’ love interest throughout time.

“For me, with the time periods, it was trying to latch on to what that person would be like, the version of that in the period,” Barnard says of playing essentially the same character throughout different time periods. “[It was about] holding on to the essence of Alex, so you may have a slightly different kink to it, if you’re in the Forties or if you’re in the Eighties. In my head, I kept thinking it was like his grandfather, his great grandfather, his great great grandfather. So there was this clear bloodline that had a slightly different edge each time.”

“There was a very short shoot time [on this movie], and these guys had agreed to do this crazy project, and it was just so fun for me to see what they’d come up with,” Lowe adds.

“Quite often, I have no time to actually talk to people at length about the characters. They come on set, I’m in a massive wig and a corset and I’m like ‘hi, we’re doing it now’. It’s to the credit of these guys. They just rolled with it and created these amazing dynamics with the characters.

“We just had lots of fun with it.”

Aneurin Barnard (pictured) played his different era character(s) as if they were all related.

Speaking of that corset and wig, Timestalker takes audiences (and Agnes) to time periods including Georgian England and Eighties New York. For Lowe, choosing those periods had quite simple reasonings behind them: “I like all the costumes from all of those eras,” she laughs.

“But also, pushing my imaginary glasses up my nose, a clever answer would be that it’s all different times of romantic ideas coming to the forefront, through religion, literature, music, and poetry,” she continues. “These ideas of these stories that are told to us about what romance is.

“It was the sort of beginning of a commodification of romance, of selling it to people, which is actually sort of slightly damaging to people’s psyche. Because, say, in the 1700s people started reading novels about love affairs and sitting all by themselves filling their heads with fancy ideas. It’s probably why we’re all so depressed, to be honest.

“Also, what it was like for women in those different periods as well. They were all interesting periods for women and how these stories were filtered through to us.”

To be fair, that corset and wig is pretty impressive…

Unfortunately for Agnes, her big romantic story always ends with her death pretty soon after finding the so-called man of her dreams. Shame for Agnes, but fun for audiences due to the myriad – and sometimes hilarious – ways Agnes meets her untimely end. “I mean, the carriage one does get a very good laugh, because she does just look like human salami by the end of it,” Lowe laughs of her favourite death in the movie.

“It’s more [Aneurin]’s reaction to it, which is hilarious. He’s just like ‘ew that’s a bit of a mess’. He reacts a bit like someone whose bins have fallen over and he doesn’t really want to pick it up. I love that death.”

We feel that perhaps we shouldn’t have brought up the subject of death to the cast of Timestalker as it turns into a bit of a death debate… “Do you have a dream death in real life?” Frost asks Lowe.

“I think, just to sleep, listening to some nice music. Why, would you like an axe in the head or something?”

“I would be about 500 meters from a man with a high-powered sniper rifle. You don’t hear it, it just happens, and then you hear the bang afterwards and you’ll be dead.

“That’s how gran went and that’s how I want to go.”

Fair enough! How would you like to go? Answers on a postcard to SciFiNow please.

Timestalker is out in cinemas now. Read our review here