Lurker

LURKER   ***

Alex Russell

2025

IDEA:  Retail worker Matthew goes to extreme lengths to worm his way into the life and career of burgeoning British pop star Oliver.

BLURB:  With taut storytelling and caustic humor, Lurker conveys the sense of a reality warped by the twin influences of celebrity culture and social media. In this simulacral world, ego and social currency are contingent on likes and follows, visibility is tantamount to fame, and user engagement becomes reified as personal connection. It’s neither healthy for the stans nor the stars, as writer-director Alex Russell makes searingly evident in the toxic symbiosis between Matthew and Oliver. The pair may initially be divergent in terms of status, but it soon becomes clear that they are two sides of the same coin: insecure, emotionally needy young men united by a hunger for attention and external validation that both can supply. Their increasingly codependent relationship blurs the boundaries between fan and celebrity, consumer and creator, pursuer and object, generating a potent ambiguity as well as a pathos that suggests both are victims of the same deranging media ecosystem. What do authenticity, originality, and talent look like in such a performative and homogenized culture? Lurker asks this of its protagonists, and is thornily inconclusive. Russell makes us as dubious about Oliver's artistry as Matthew's feelings toward it, and raises questions about the nature of tastemaking in an industry ruled by trends. Théodore Pellerin and Archie Madekwe add entrancingly to the semantic uncertainty. In mercurial performances that limn the dark undercurrents of homosociality, their line deliveries about true callings sit somewhere between awkward expressions of earnest sentiment and parodies of rote marketing-speak. If you can’t tell the difference online, how can you be expected to in real life?