‘Lurker’ Review: Alex Russell’s Fascinating Directorial Debut
Alex Russell eviscerates our social media-obsessed era with the riveting and often terrifying Lurker, thanks to incredible turns from Théodore Pellerin and Archie Madekwe.
There seems to be a great deal of hype surrounding Alex Russell’s Lurker, which recently had its Canadian premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival. At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the film was one of its buzziest titles, and has experienced continued chatter as Lurker now bows out in select cinemas. Whenever a cloud of hype surrounds a movie, it’s hard to gauge whether or not it will ultimately live up to such rapturous reception, especially considering how many critics attending festivals usually watch more than two movies in a given day and can’t properly have time to sit with the title they’d just witnessed, since they’re rushing for the next screening. A culture that doesn’t think and only uses hyperbolic buzzwords to qualify a piece of art isn’t one to be trusted.
While I sadly couldn’t catch the movie at Fantasia, I can confirm that the hype is indeed real. When I finally sat down and watched Russell’s debut, a feeling of unease immediately began to creep up on me during its opening scene, where thrift store worker Matthew (Théodore Pellerin) meets his idol, up-and-coming pop singer Oliver (Archie Madekwe) at his place of work. The two immediately hit it off after Matthew “coincidentally” plays Oliver’s favorite song, Nile Rodgers’ “My Love Song for You” at the store, and the artist invites him to his concert. He wants “a real person” there, not a die-hard fan who can’t objectively listen to his work. He wants someone that can appreciate his music without the prism of social media adoration dominating his life.
Coincidentally is in quotes, because we quickly learn that Matthew is obsessed with Oliver, and knows everything about his personal life, including who is in his inner circle, and his “tastes” in music, because he’s been lurking on his — and his friends’ — Instagram accounts. He desperately wants to be a part of this circle and finally has the opportunity to make a good impression that will allow him the privileged access he’s always dreamed of. Russell never gives an explanation as to why Matthew wants this life, which makes his “plan” scarier when he is eventually tasked with directing a behind-the-scenes documentary on Oliver’s life, after Matthew successfully demoted filmmaker Noah (Daniel Zolghadri) during a music video shoot and takes over these responsibilities to get closer — and more intimate — to Oliver than before.
I’ll try to keep plot details as minimal as possible, but what unfolds over the course of the movie’s 103-minute runtime is simultaneously stomach-churning as it is also amazingly depressing. Matthew will eventually shut off friends from his life, including Oliver superfan Jamie (Sunny Suljic), if it means spending more time with the singer and being close to the person he’s revered — as we learn — for some time. However, when something bad occurs, the dynamic between Oliver and Matthew immediately shifts, and the back half of Lurker becomes telegraphically disturbing, yet still incredibly effective to the point where you may even rethink the place social media has in your life.
Many will compare these social media-driven sections to something akin from Matt Spicer’s incredible Ingrid Goes West, or Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler, and will be correct in contrasting these films with Russell’s debut. However, I found it shared more similarities with Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, the masterpiece that saw a lonely man with a sole purpose go through extreme measures in making sure their goal is attained. It helps my case that Matthew lives with a maternal figure at home and constantly shuts her out, almost as if she prevents him from becoming who he is. However, what he does to ensure he stays within Oliver’s inner circle is perhaps more f—ed up than anything Rupert Pupkin would attempt, because Robert De Niro’s character at least had his limits.
In the age where we allegedly “learn stuff on our phones all day,” the word “limit” no longer exists. People know everything about everyone and even form parasocial relationships with total strangers they’ll never meet. The only thing we collectively learn on our phones all day is how stupid people are, and how many need to back off and give figures they don’t know some space. Stan accounts create narratives that aren’t there and think they know more about a person’s lives than the individual themselves. That’s why Matthew’s behavior feels threatening from the start, and never once feels like he forms a natural connection with Oliver, his friends Swett (Zach Fox), Bowen (Wale Onayemi), Shai (Havana Rose Liu), and has an active working relationship at the retail store he works with Jamie.
He constantly uses people to his advantage, knows what he should get out of a person, and immediately drops them from his life when they are of no use to him. And when things take a (predictable) dark turn, Matthew knows precisely how he can get back “in” Oliver’s circle and finish the documentary he promised to direct. But nothing feels natural anymore – the symbiosis between the two is long gone, and many within Ollie’s group are finding ways to try and get rid of Matthew, even resorting to violent methods in the hopes he understands. However, we find out he doesn’t really care.
While Russell holds our hand in the first half of Lurker, he abandons this device and knows we’re intelligent enough to figure out exactly what the final moments of his movie means, especially in a quest for “artificial” adoration that blurs the lines between “love and obsession,” two concepts that don’t seem that different from each other when you put them on the same pedestal. These words are the central point of focus of Russell’s film, and its meaning is eventually perverted when we reach a conclusion that is more devastating than uplifting. Without giving anything away, one thing Oliver realizes is that Matthew understands him and his art like no one else does, and not even his friends. That makes him valuable in Oliver’s eyes, especially as an artist on a quest to already reinvent himself when his career barely started.
So when he crosses a line and does something completely unethical (let alone illegal), and Oliver is at an impasse, what does he do? His actions may shock you, but this is where Russell scratches a deeper itch that’s at the heart of films like Ingrid Goes West and Nightcrawler, which also recall The King of Comedy. Every protagonist in these films do the unthinkable to attain success and never ponder if what they’re doing is right or wrong. It’s, they feel, the “only way” to become the revered sensations they are known to be. So, even if Matthew isn’t as friendly as he was with Oliver, the singer feels like he can’t simply get rid of him, especially after shooting a music video that captures the artist at his most unadulterated, and raw, something he’s been chasing for so long.
When that happens, Russell peels back the layers of his thesis even more and concludes Lurker with an open-ended coda that’ll break your heart in a million pieces, because the “chronically online” culture we’ve fostered over the years isn’t healthy, nor sustainable. Through one simple “cut to” credits, Russell tells us more about society’s doomed future on our screens than any “tech” journalist who thinks phones are essential to the development of a younger generation’s understanding of the world do. Pellerin also plays Matthew so well that we’re ultimately drawn to his plight, not because he deserves success, but only due to how broken he is, and that we ultimately see a way out of this predicament that he sadly doesn’t realize, even when he attains his definition of the “top of the world.”
In short, we don’t learn anything on our phones all day. We know people are stupid and will make terrible decisions for the world to see, because they seek attention. Not validation, but attention. That’s what the entire internet is based on. Once you understand this inextricable fact, it’s hard to mount a single ounce of sympathy for anyone in Lurker (even if Pellerin and Madekwe are incredible from beginning to end), because the internet forces us to detach from the very core of being human. And when we lose our humanity, who do we become?