Lurker ★★★1/2
- 2filmcritics
- 3 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Availability: Still showing in some major film markets nationally. Acquired by Mubi (US) and Focus Features (international), but not yet available for rent or purchase. Check JustWatch here for future online rent and purchase options.
Boys in the Band
Up-and-coming singer Oliver takes into his music “family” a disaffected clothing store clerk. Intrigued by the clerk’s honesty and disinterest in being star-struck, Oliver invites him backstage at that evening’s concert, which the store clerk hardly views as a big deal. Matthew walks into Oliver’s green room, where the standard stuff is going on: the music star is making out with a random young fan and a couple other hangers-on are lounging about. Except they all have their pants down. Should Matt indicate his willingness to join the group by taking down his pants? This is Matt’s first introduction to Oliver’s milieu. Puzzled, he can’t figure out if the boys are serious, making playful fun of him, or if he’s the victim of a kind of frat hazing. The genius of Alex Russell’s film is that we, the viewer, are with Matt here—we can’t figure it out either. Matt does the unexpected (we wouldn’t have been that clever) and passes this first test. If that’s what it is.
Oliver (Archie Madekwe), left, and Matt (Théodore Pellerin)
find joy in their artist/muse relationship...early on.
The ensuing intrigue around who is in and who is out with the star may strike some as hackneyed, though the scenes are written and acted so well that one can’t imagine what will happen next. Matt seems unwelcome in Oliver’s large Los Angeles house, where he’s relegated to taking out the trash and washing dishes. Yet Oliver calls him his muse (in no time he’ll be his “best friend”), and seems to understand that the young, now-former, clerk has a handle on a commodity that Oliver, even in the throes of heady success, knows to be in ebbing supply: authenticity. Instead of gushing to Oliver that his music is great, Matt tells Oliver he can be better. Later, he’ll show him how.
Théodore Pellerin is fascinating and mystifying as the clerk-turned-muse.
Théodore Pellerin is fascinating and mystifying as the clerk-turned-muse. His angular features, penetrating eyes, and cropped hair echo Anthony Perkins or Adrien Brody, 2 masters of brooding. What’s behind that sometimes-boyish, sometimes-disturbing face cannot be fathomed. With his caramel-colored, soft, full face, encircled by curly locks—and radiating confidence in his power and authority— Archie Madekwe’s Oliver is the perfect contrast to Pellerin’s pasty inscrutability.
Théodore Pellerin shows many sides
to the store-clerk turned artist, Matt.
The so-far naïve Matt copies the strategies of the others in the house, each vying and manipulating for the attention of the star. A couple of bros (Zack Fox among them) and a competent, wary girlfriend/manager Shai (Havana Rose Liu) attempt to marginalize the newcomer. We see Matt burdened and overloaded with the camera equipment for Oliver’s videographer/photographer Noah (Daniel Zolghadri, wonderful in “Funny Pages” [2022]), who sets up the newest group member for failure. Or is it the other way around?
The tension that develops between an increasingly anxious and neurotic Oliver and his increasingly confident and assertive underling comes to a head on a trip to London, where Matt wakes up in his hotel room to find everyone has left without him, and the return to Los Angeles, where we see him once more clerking in the clothing store. One might expect Oliver to take drastic action to counter what at one point has become Matt’s power, but the songster pulls back from that. One might expect a turn to horror, but Russell pulls back from that. The one character who never seems to pull back is Matt, who manages to get himself out of the clothing store once again.
Russell has been a writer and producer on major TV shows, among them “The Bear” and “Beef.” In this, his first feature as writer and director, he has crafted a narrative that keeps viewers off balance. It’s not so much the slow reveal that makes this film work. It’s the small moments, the ambiguous moments, the awkward moments, the unpredictable and unexpected—the not knowing.
Matt comes up with the idea of putting his hand-held camera on the back of that sheep, a perspective that for Oliver confirms Matt’s Scorsese-like genius.
Russell’s film techniques underscore his message. The opening scene is a retrospective look, via a 5-year-old home video, of Matt being asked about his dreams and ambitions. He can’t articulate anything. We next see him standing listlessly in the clothing store. When Matt is part of Oliver’s group, charged with making a documentary of the singer’s career trajectory, on screen we see the music star’s world from Matt’s point of view. And then jerky footage from a sheep’s eye view, when Matt comes up with the idea of putting his hand-held camera on the back of that sheep, a perspective that for Oliver confirms Matt’s Scorsese-like genius.
Is Matt a natural creative artist? Or a lucky amateur skilled at pleasing his boss?
The juxtaposition of highly structured regular movie shots and accidental recordings from a personal camera becomes a metaphor for “seen it before” versus creativity and artistry. Is Matt a natural creative artist? Or a lucky amateur skilled at pleasing his boss? Again, the techniques keep the viewers on their toes. What is happening here? Who is Matt? Who is Oliver? What is art? And what is authenticity?
“Lurker” could be viewed as a story about a troubled young man. Much more than that, it charts a corrupted and perverted ambition to which we are all vulnerable—especially in the Age of Internet Fame—vulnerable to the desire for even minor celebrity, vulnerable to our fantasies and obsessions. The culture of celebrity encourages all of us to be part of it, tainting everyone, damaging one’s tentative sense of self, obscuring one’s essence, if there is such a thing or, in Matt’s case, revealing its ugly side. Matt is not a worshipper of Oliver’s fame, but a lurker who discovers he wants his own and thinks he deserves it. Maybe he does. And maybe to be creative what they both need is each other.
She says: Russell’s film was a “favorite” at Sundance, where it premiered in January. It also was a Berlin International Film Festival selection.
He says: Perfect for a college class in social psychology.
Date: 2025
Director: Alex Russell
Starring: Théodore Pellerin, Archie Madekwe, Zack Fox, Havana Rose Liu, Daniel Zolghadri.
Country: United States
Language: English
Runtime: 100 minutes
Other Awards: 3 nominations to date