Depending on the context, Théodore Pellerin, the actor who plays Lurker’s low-rent answer to Tom Ripley, has a boyish lankiness that can read like high-fashion elegance or off-putting awkwardness. As Matthew, a retail drone who manages to clamber his way into the inner circle of a rising pop star named Oliver (Archie Madekwe), Pellerin leans forcefully into the latter. Matthew is all prominent Adam’s apple and assessing eyes, radiating intensity even when trying to act casual, grinning self-effacingly in an attempt to smooth over the way he’s forever half a beat behind. He looks like prey, like the kind of person others instinctively want to bully, but he’s savvier than he initially appears. He first gets Oliver’s attention by putting on an old Nile Rodgers track at the boutique where he works when Oliver wanders in one day, a song we later learn that the musician posted on social media years ago. Matthew, despite having clearly studied up, pretends to have no idea who Oliver is, and while Oliver appears to be onto him, the calculated gambit works — he invites Matthew to his show that night in what’s effectively an audition to become another hanger-on in his orbit.
Lurker, which takes place in a sun-drenched Los Angeles where the veil between no ones and someones is especially thin, is the impishly uncomfortable directorial debut from Alex Russell, a writer on The Bear and Beef. It’s a film that shares DNA with other contemporary social-climbing thrillers Saltburn or Ingrid Goes West, but it ends up having more interesting things on its mind about the interdependent nature of fandom and fame. Matthew, who lives at home and appears to have nothing else going on in his life when he meets Oliver, grabs onto this opportunity to ascend to a more glamorous plane of existence like it’s a winning lottery ticket, installing himself in Oliver’s rented mansion alongside the skeptical members of the man’s entourage (among them Zack Fox and Wale Onayemi) and appointing himself the in-house videographer. “I genuinely think you’ve got an eye,” Oliver tells him of his camerawork after a giddy evening, and while Oliver has a habit of appointing friends into professional roles they’re in no way qualified for, Matthew drinks in the compliment like it’s divine nectar. Matthew is a ruthless worm who demonstrates in disturbing ways how far he’s willing to go to preserve his place at Oliver’s side, and Pellerin — who was previously seared into my mind as the persistent creep on the bus in Never Rarely Sometimes Always — delivers a masterful performance always riding the edge of cringe.
But what makes Lurker more than just a Jenga game in which collapse is inevitable is the way that Oliver is presented as someone who’s just as calculating and hungry as his counterpart. Oliver may long to be taken seriously as a musician, to discuss his influences and his personal pain, but when we see him onstage early on, we understand that he’s a dime-a-dozen talent who happens to have picked up a following. And he seems aware of this too, which feeds into his desire to have praise but to also maintain control, keeping a crew around him who always have to jockey for position by saying the right thing. Matthew — for a while, at least — is the person who seems to actually know about music and authenticity, though the sly flashes of cruelty Madekwe lets show make it clear that Oliver will eventually get tired of this particular flavor of validation eventually. While Lurker never lets its sense of suspense slacken, there are times when what it evokes is less The Talented Mr. Ripley and more The Idea of You, in which Anne Hathaway plays a single mother who engages in a whirlwind romance with a boy-bander played by Nicholas Galitzine.
Matthew and Oliver have bouts of closeness that are homoerotic, though to say that Matthew is in love with Oliver is, like saying that Matthew wants to be Oliver, a little too easy. Lurker is about the giddiness of being adjacent to celebrity — about the rush of followers you might get after being featured in someone big’s Instagram Stories, about being whisked off to London for a show, about being in the bubble alongside a star, even a minor one. It may be a sad reflection of an existence, but what Lurker wryly suggests is that Oliver himself couldn’t exist without people like Matthew around him, believing in his importance, proving themselves willing to say or do anything to stay nearby. Matthew may be repellent, but that’s ultimately part of his appeal — without sycophants and obsessives willing to make their lives accessories to yours, how would you ever really know you’re famous?
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