Lurker? Crandall says 4/5

Lurker is a strange iteration on a classic story of the parasitic hanger-on who yearns for the spotlight—who scratches and claws for an opportunity to sit on the sideline and stare lovingly up at their idols. The distinction for Lurker , Alex Russell's entry into the canon of these psycho-sexual obsession thrillers, is that it's fully engrained in our modern day para-social culture, riddled with clout chasers and crash outs.

This contemporary, pop-culture-laden riff recalls similar films that precede Russell’s variation—All About Eve , The Talented Mr. Ripley , Ingrid Goes West . But Russell and his cast successfully navigate the formula, taking from the well-trod tropes and distilling them into something rooted in today's world. The film’s strength lies in the precise anthropological menace around the cult of personality in a TikTok trend cycle.

Matthew (Théodore Pellerin), is just another lonely twenty-something nobody with no clear idea of where he wants to go. He is a product of being raised by the algorithm. Matthew exists to perform what he considers authenticity. He works in one of those deliberately sparse LA boutiques where actual vintage is indistinguishable from manufactured distress. Matthew exists in the embodiment of this confusion—whether authentic or curated—it actually doesn’t matter as long as it drives likes.

When mid-tier popstar Oliver (Archie Madekwe) wanders into Matthew’s orbit, the central dynamic of the film crystallizes. Through a bit of happenstance (Tumblr) Oliver takes a liking to Matthew’s performative aloofness. Matthew, living with his grandmother and seemingly lacking any social life, takes the inch and runs the mile. He burrows into Oliver’s inner circle by simply ‘making himself useful’—washing dishes and accepting the childish hazing rituals of Oliver’s entourage gatekeepers/yes men. While many people would tap out, the treatment only spurs Matthew and his willingness to show up and not be deterred by the sophomoric hazing forward. He ingratiates himself to the crew and nabs a job as documentarian.

This isn’t the traditional predator-prey relationship of the earlier obsession thrillers, it’s something far more insidious. Matthew and Oliver enter a symbiotic transaction where both parties become the user and the used. Matthew feeds Oliver’s ego with surgical precision, while Oliver provides Matthew the clout to transform from a nobody into somebody’s documentarian. Both Pellerin and Madekwe navigate the tight rope of their roles with aplomb – Madekwe infuses Oliver with the right amount of airy, narcissistic charm and Pellerin plays the sleaze that seeps out from the desperation and the dejection with an expertise that feels like a case study more than a character.

Russell’s direction shows restraint in a genre that favors operatic excess. The film’s production and cinematography is a perfect mirror to its themes. It feels like a world where every private moment can be, will be, and should be staged for potential content.

However, the film does suffer from it’s own distance. Matthew and Oliver can start to feel like specimen under a microscope rather than characters we fully inhabit. The greats in this genre let the obsession and the allure crawl around and infuse into your veins, while here we are mostly watching from the outside like we’re studying behavior.

What saves the film from being a methodical genre exercise is its understanding of how para-social relationships have evolved. It invites the audience to see the whole toxic world of modern celebrity culture where the hunger for fame has become both the product being sold and the addiction driving everything forward. Lurker succeeds because it captures something essential about our current moment of celebrity. When everyone is simultaneously a performer and an audience member, the real horror isn’t just in the obsession, it’s how normal it’s all become.

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