FrightFest Halloween review – Time Travel Is Dangerous

FrightFest Halloween review – Time Travel Is Dangerous

Ruth Syratt and Megan Stevenson run Cha Cha Cha, a vintage shop in Muswell Hill (London N10) – it’s key to this engaging British comedy that they’re real people playing versions of themselves, surrounded by an eclectic cast of showbizzy names who gamely fit into the women’s world.  Having found a time machine constructed around a fairground dodgem car next to the bins, the women have been raiding the past for merchandise to sell – to keep their traditionally ruthless bastard landlord (Simon Killick) from shutting them down and turning the place into luxury flats.  When their repeated trips to the past fracture time and space, with wormholes appearing all over the place, they fall in with a society of eccentric fringe scientists – which includes the guy (Brian Bovell) who invented the machine then abandoned it after a spell in a dangerous limbo (as Deadpool says, think Loki Season One Episode Five) and a traumatic breakup with his robot-impersonating sidekick (Johnny Vegas).  Among the side-effects of time travel here, Ruth is replaced by her teenage self for a spell and Megan gets lost in a time vortex inhabited by the likes of Mark Heap, Jane Horrocks and an octopoid voiced by Brian Blessed where everything is subsumed into one giant crooked game.

It’s a collection of jokes strung on surprisingly sweet character material, with pros like Tony Way, Guy Henry, Tom Lenk and Sophie Thompson sketching in character arcs and observations which are as telling as any in more polished British films (Henry, in particular, nails a particular type of society-joiner – the man who has nothing to add to the purpose of an organisation but somehow ends up running it).  Declaration of interest – I lived in Muswell Hill for a spell in the 1980s, and probably get a lot of the locality-specific jokes (there’s a splendid diss about Wood Green which would take hours to explain but – trust me – it’s hilarious) which won’t travel … too many development execs would insist on losing this stuff, which proverbially won’t play in Peoria, but that’s missing the fact that it’s the heart of this movie’s character.  It feels real and grounded because of it – and that’s how it can afford to traipse through time (some historical re-enacters get cameos to depict the Wild West, Napoleonic wars, the middle ages, etc – and there’s a stegosaurus) and do absurdist cosmic horror skits too.  Also with Stephen Fry (narrator), Laura Aikman and a tiny bit from Abigail Blackmore – star of Michael J. Murphy’s Avalon and director of Tales From the Lodge.  Written by producers Anna-Elizabeth and Hillary Shakespeare and director Chris Reading.