@Courtesy of MUBI
After participating as a writer to successful TV series like The Bear, Beef and Dave, Alex Russell has written and directed his first feature film setting it in the Los Angeles music world. Lurker tells the story of Matthew (Théodore Pellerin), an ordinary young man who works in a boutique where one day his idol Oliver (Archie Madekwe), an emerging songwriter, shows up. After becoming friends, the musician wants Matthew to join his crew as a visual artist, shooting a documentary about his own work. After a while the relationship between the two complex personalities becomes more and more toxic, but soon they will both discover it isn’t that easy to cut ties with one another…
Since Joseph Losey realized in 1963 his masterpiece The Servant, starring Dirk Bogarde and James Fox, the ambiguity of the relationship between two men coming from different social classes or economic environments has been developed through several movies all over the last decades.
Russell has once again picked this narrative scheme adding in this case something new, especially in the second half of his movie. In the first one we follow mostly Matthew entering in this new world of wonder, luxury and free expression: his greed for attention is nothing really new for this kind of psychological drama, but it’s surely well depicted, especially because the screenplay is quite subtle and Théodore Pellerin’s performance quite effective. The actor is capable of showing the fragility of the character as well as his twisted sides.
©Courtesy of MUBI
Oliver’s personality is a little more schematic, being the careless and “doomed” artist who wants to be surrounded by yes men until he gets bored of them. When a plot twist brings them to a forced separation, here’s when Lurker becomes quite original and disturbingly effective: the movie in fact shows how this kind of toxic relationship is made by not one, but two different kinds of parasites, who in the end can’t truly survive without the other becoming a reluctant host.
The last thirty minutes of Lurker are developed through surprising screenplay twists, which make the movie way more ambiguous and problematic than expected. Alex Russell proves to be a fine writer and a sensible director, finding truth where others would have just shown the dark side of both the characters. Matthew and Oliver instead become more and more wicked but also believable, because they are most likely the same side of a human condition in need of approval, even when absolutely volatile.
We already wrote about how Théodore Pellerin works well in Matthew’s role. Archie Madekwe fills Oliver’s role with a charismatic performance, but nothing as good as his co-star. Among the other members of the cast Havana Rose Liu confirms that she has the skills to become someone we’ll see for a long time on big and smaller screens.
Alex Russell knew what he wanted to show in Lurker, and the movie itself demonstrated that the director knew also how to do it. Everything starts with a screenplay that picks a well-known premise – the wicked relationship between a vain star and a manipulative fan – and refreshes it with a contemporary take that becomes definitely intriguing. Last but not least, the casting of capable young actors in the main roles granted Russell the right amount of layered characters, whose complexity can’t be boxed as schematic. In the end, the writer-director has realized an hypnotic movie that reaches the goal of making the audience rightfully uneasy.
©Courtesy of MUBI
Rate: B
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Here’s the trailer for Lurker: