‘Lurker’ Review: A Geek Edges Himself Into a Pop Star’s Inner Circle in Alex Russell’s Nifty and Unnerving Parable of the Pathology of Fame
“Lurker” is a tight, nifty, and unsettling little parable of the pathology of fame in our time. It tells the story of Matthew (Théodore Pellerin), a nobody who works in one of those bare-bones L.A. clothing boutiques, and how he insinuates himself into the inner circle of Oliver (Archie Madekwe), a budding pop star who has legions of screaming fans but is trying to leap to the next level. (He still rides around in a tour bus.) Matthew becomes Oliver’s bro, his hanger-on, his social-media camera buddy. And Matthew is grateful for the attention — so grateful, in fact, that he’ll do anything, and stop at nothing, to keep it coming.
Thirty years ago, a premise like this one might have been the fuel for a conventional Hollywood thriller. But Alex Russell, the writer-director of “Lurker,” works with a highly accomplished jittery cell-phone-camera aesthetic that makes the entire movie a mirror of what it’s about: the fleeting I-shoot-a-video-of-myself-therefore-I-am celebrity that’s become the coin of the realm in the Instagram era. Everyone in the movie is jockeying to be cool, to be more inside than thou, to be anointed by Oliver, and therefore to share in the privileged aura of his fame mystique. But it’s like a castle in the air of aspiration built on nothing but itself.
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That may sound a bit facile, but the genuine grip of “Lurker” begins with Matthew, who as played by Théodore Pellerin emerges as a character of startlingly subtle and unnerving calculation. At first we think he’s just a geek, because that’s how he presents himself: too awkward to be anything but sincere, with a toothy wide grin and bird-like eyes that stare like lasers. (He also lives with his grandmother.) But he’s a pretty good-looking geek, and he knows how to do the handshakes and play the video games and drop the “yos” and “bros” in the right place. The more we see him operate, the more those eyes of his become a study in backstabbing suspense. He’s got a touch of Norman Bates, along with a beatific passive-aggression that reminds me of the great performance Mike White gave as a stalker in “Chuck & Buck.” Matthew is a geek playing a geek, and those orbs of his take everything in.
He’s working at the clothing store when the tall, British, biracial Oliver, with his signature two-tone hair (red on top, dark on the sides), wanders in to browse. He’s been there before, and Matthew immediately programs “My Love Song for You” on the speaker system — a beautiful track off Nile Rogers’ 1983 solo album. He knows that it’s one of Oliver’s deep-cut faves, and that it will therefore make him look like the ultimate Oliver connoisseur to play it. Sure enough, it catches Oliver’s attention, and Oliver comes up and appreciates the hell out of him. He asks Matthew to come to that night’s show, and even takes his number so that he can pass him backstage.
When Matthew arrives in the dressing room, what he sees isn’t what he was expecting: Oliver sitting around with a girlfriend and the two members of his entourage (who he’s known since middle school), and no one could care less about Matthew, except to razz him (he’s casually asked to take his pants down). But that’s because he isn’t on the inside yet; this scene is like a hazing rite, which he passes. So Oliver asks him to come over to his house in the Hollywood Hills. He has instructed Matthew to bring along his old-school camcorder, because he wants Matthew to document him — to help with the documentary Oliver is making about himself, and to come up with social-media-ready riffs.
Oliver, like any pop star on the rise, wants to publicize himself, but not that long ago this sort of thing would have been handled by the record company, and the publicists who work for it. Fame is now more self-generated, and so it almost doesn’t matter if Matthew, behind the camera, has talent (though he does). Everything they’re shooting is disposable: pranks, vérité fan service, whatever will grab people’s attention.
Tellingly, we see Oliver and Matthew play a mutual game of fake admiration. Oliver tells his new bro that he’s special (because Matthew understands him), and that he might be his best friend; but we can tell that Oliver, even at his most ardent, just says whatever pops into his head. He can afford to not have his words mean anything. And what he wants from Matthew is the kind of flattery that can stoke him. “I think you’re going to be the biggest artist in the world,” says Matthew, sounding like he means it. That’s the kind of comment that hits the sweet spot. Archie Madekwe, from “Saltburn,” infuses Oliver with an exquisitely authentic vibe of walking-on-air camaraderie that’s always there…for a price. Which is why it’s all so fickle.
Oliver, from a broken background, says that the people around him are family — and that now he has the power to choose his own family. That’s one of themes of the film: that the makeshift cults of worship on social media, and in celebrity entourages, have become substitute families, which is one reason they’re so addictive. And Matthew is nothing less than an addict for Oliver’s admiration; he’s hooked on his new place in the world. Thanks to Oliver, Matthew’s Instagram account blows up with followers; suddenly, he’s a “celebrity” too. It’s all happening, spiraling forward of its own accord — at least, until they’re shooting a video for one of Oliver’s songs with sheep in a barnyard, and the official documentary dude (Daniel Zolghardri) who Matthew has been working with runs out of camera juice and suddenly can’t find his spare batteries. Uh-oh! We have a pretty good idea who took them.
There’s a digital-age “All About Eve” aspect to “Lurker.” When Jamie (Sunny Suljic), Matthew’s comrade from the clothing store, finds himself being tapped by Oliver for his hand-crafted sweaters (suddenly, he’s hanging out at the house too), the way Matthew registers the threat to his own ascendance is chilling. He thought he was the special one, the star bro. He doesn’t want to share the love. Even when Oliver, after the group’s trip to London, starts to figure out that Matthew is trouble and freezes him out, it won’t end there. Matthew has set up a surveillance camera in Oliver’s living room, and when two eager young Oliver fans come up to him in the boutique, he knows just how to employ them for purposes of blackmail.
“Lurker,” as you may have gathered (and as its title tells you), is not a warm-and-fuzzy experience. The movie is told almost entirely from Matthew’s point-of-view, which you’d think, in that amoral way that cinema has, might make us take a perverse pleasure in rooting for him to succeed. But Alex Russell’s anthropological attitude is cooler and more detached than that. He doesn’t quite make Matthew into his scoundrel hero. He’s far more interested in having us drink in the whole debased circus of fame-whore spectacle that pop celebrity is becoming.
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