Critic Reviews

As a writer, Lowe is someone who can elicit a laugh from the deadpan line reading of a single word, yet the impression that the film leaves is quite different: a confessional, self-lacerating howl into the void; an expression of confusion and disappointment; a film which refuses to explain its heroine’s literal generational trauma with self-help platitudes.

As outlandish as Timestalker is, Lowe’s film holds its idea together well with style, wit, resourceful imagination, great lovelorn music, the sincerity behind heartbreak and deep yearning, and hilarious, sharp laughs to boot.

What Lowe accomplished in only her second full-length feature in roughly eight years shows such promise as a daring filmmaker with an original voice that deserves a megaphone, and I can only hope it doesn't take eight more to see what comes next.

Taking pleasure in subverting romcom tropes and boasting a satisfying attention to detail, Timestalker is a showcase for Lowe’s considerable talents on both sides of the camera.

Timestalker may get a lot of mileage out of unrequited affection, but it still gives audiences plenty to love.

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.

Through some ingenious production design and costuming, Timestalker creates a time-hopping menagerie of madness, with Lowe centre stage and always game.

This film ripples with emotion. It is suffused with a sense of longing that lodges deep in its audience, even if we don’t always fully understand it.

Timestalker certainly puts on a show.

Lowe finds ways to make it all feel if not wholly original, at least quite fresh. You’ve heard this story before, but you’ve never seen it quite like this.