Rarely do you encounter someone as blankly unsettling as Matthew (Théodore Pellerin), seemingly just a random Gen-Z store clerk at a Los Angeles boutique favored by Gen-Z celebrities. At rest, his angular face is both vacant and guarded, as if he is somehow hiding behind his own cheekbones. When he smiles, it is a tight and frightening mask. When he nears something he wants, his posture becomes birdlike, nervous, poised to spring, eyes trained on the object of his desire. Matthew’s vibes, one might say, are very bad.
What Matthew wants in this case is Oliver (Archie Madekwe), a talented, mononymous pop star with an easy manner and a coterie of congenial friends who follow him around. They live in his house, chill backstage at his shows and eat tacos on his couch while Shai (a steely Havana Rose Liu) keeps track of Oliver’s business dealings. Oliver harbors sophisticated artistic aspirations, but for now he’s still performing the kind of cookie-cutter music favored by his fans. Matthew knows what kind of music Oliver really likes — Nile Rodgers, for one — and when he spots Oliver in the store, he moves fast to change what’s playing in the background. When Oliver notices, Matthew plays it cool, as if he’s never heard of Oliver or his music. And it works: He ends up with an invitation to come backstage at Oliver’s next show.
Matthew, you see, is a very different kind of fan.
“Lurker” is a tight and wicked little film, a promising debut feature for the writer and director Alex Russell, a kind of minimalist counterbalance to the maximalist dissipation of “Saltburn.” (Madekwe is in that one, too.) There’s Tom Ripley DNA in the tale, and echoes of other obsessive psycho-thrillers, updated for the social media age — I thought of the 2017 dark comedy “Ingrid Goes West.”
It takes its time at first, but once it really gets going, “Lurker” is snaky and disconcerting and smart. It plunges its fish hooks deep into the insecurities of its two main characters, and with each scene it tugs again, exposing how the manufacturing and preservation of fame in this cultural moment turns everyone into an anxious, needy wreck. You get famous by being near someone famous, or by acting famous, and once you’ve got fame there’s no way to know how to keep it. Both Matthew and Oliver have been sucked into that vortex, albeit from opposite directions.
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The post ‘Lurker’ Review: He’ll Be Watching You appeared first on New York Times.
