MIFF 2025: Reviewing Alex Russell's 'Lurker'

Source Credit: MIFF, Lurker (2025) directed by Alex Russell

Lurker (2025) is the directional debut of Alex Russell (writer and producer for The Bear, Beef), and it presents an exploration of the artist and the admirer(s). The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and I had the chance to watch it at Melbourne’s 2025 International Film Festival (MIFF). The film follows reclusive retail worker Matthew (Théodore Pellerin). By chance, Matthew meets rising pop star Oliver (Archie Madekwe), sparking a connection over their mutual love of music. Oliver soon invites Matthew backstage—and, eventually, into the world of celebrity as a privileged observer.

After this encounter, Matthew enters Oliver’s inner circle. This leads to an examination of loneliness and obsession, setting the film's mood. Russell explores shifting power dynamics. He contrasts the allure of celebrity with the intense infatuation of a fan. Matthew begins to challenge and distance himself from the 'fan' label as he grows closer to Oliver.

Russell references the mid-2010s era of social media, which became mainstream. He places the film in 2017 and uses Instagram to evoke the epoch of “content houses” amidst a Los Angeles that was ravaged and dominated by clout culture, resembling the interiority of what was seen online in that specific period of time, without explicitly gesturing towards the swarm of YouTubers or Hollywood stars, but alludes to their influence. The story remains focused on Oliver, a recording artist. As Oliver's career rises, he represents a broad class of hybrid influencer-celebrities built on social media exposure.

Now, having fully immersed himself in Oliver’s life as a creative, Matthew transforms from an interloping and passive “fan” to a creative director who adopts a position of artistic weight in Oliver’s life, assuming power in the sense of creative direction. Matthew at first, is relegated to the role of videographer as he shoots the documentary for Oliver–which is done through an old VHS camera in contrast to the more modern digital technologies of that era. Which is ironic, considering that whenever I reach into my mind and remember the aesthetics of the mid to late 2010s, I see an abundance of glitch imbued art and Snapchat selfies, pseudo-VHS camcorder filters and the prominence of “vaporwave”, which taps into the nostalgia of remix culture. During this time in life, I distinctly remembered the facsimile of analogue technology through social media filters and third-party applications that promised the “glitchy effect of a VHS camcorder” in efforts to replicate “obsolete” technology. And as the film presents the mid-2010s “clout-driven” LA setting, I can’t help but connect this aesthetic to the superficiality it represented at the time and how tapping into nostalgia without actually using the technology of the past was normalised and emboldened by the trend. Interestingly, within this film, Oliver is able to use analogue technology to outclass and “innovate” beyond the digital technology of Oliver’s already current editor and creative director, Noah, another act which Matthew takes advantage of to climb amongst the ranks of Oliver’s entourage within the household.

Although the aesthetics of the time aren’t transmuted completely into the film (beyond Oliver’s VHS documentary), it’s worth noting that the sentiments behind the nostalgia transmit into what Lurker has to say about artistic stagnancy through the process of simulacrum. Through Matthew, Russell asks the question: Is making mediocre art that pleases fans more fulfilling than taking risks to create good and “authentic” art? Complicating this question further is the people which Oliver surrounds himself with as Matthew holds himself as the antithesis to the entourage of “Yes Men” that validate and affirm Oliver regardless of whether or not his music is generic due to their proximity to celebrity–Oliver. The entourage upon which Oliver continually refers to as “[the] new family [he] get[s] to choose who’s in it,” which posits the gradual question of whether the people around him – with the exception of Matthew – are able to creatively benefit Oliver as an artist, or just serve to validate him even in his mediocrity. Among the entourage is his manager Shai (Havana Rose Liu – who I absolutely worship and adore–need her in more movies) and she is notably one of the first people to realise the rather sinister lengths of Matthew will go to ensure and control his relationship with Oliver and at this point, the film really steps into the psychological thriller elements and embraces the title as Matthew becomes a “Lurker” and we can only sit back and watch in complete petrification and also funnily enough, cringe at the means he takes. Shai mirrors the perturbed audience reactions to Matthew’s shifting behaviours that largely goes unchecked amongst the others in the household.

While this film has true elements of a psychological thriller, it doesn’t remotely feel trapped by genre, and overall, it works that way. There are definitely comedic elements especially with the help of comedian Zach Fox (Abbott Elementary) who plays one of Oliver’s charismatic band members, Swett, alongside Sunny Suljic (Mid-90s, The Killing of a Sacred Deer) who serves as Matthew’s former work colleague and “friend”, Jamie, the foil to his proximity with Oliver. These moments of comedic relief don’t just serve to make us laugh but also reflect and ground us to confront the outlandish lengths that the admirer, lurker, and fan will go to step into the circle of influence and be a part of something larger than oneself and also the way rationality falls flat in the face of love and obsession. Which is interesting, despite Matthew’s initially characterisation as guileless, the humiliation ritual that he willingly endures in order to be accepted reveals his drastic descent towards infatuation. With that being said, Lurker has a sharp visual style, and rather than selling into the ideal landscape of LA, Russell renders Los Angeles into a city that is bleak and desaturated completely as we’re taken through Matthew’s perspective. Beyond the allure of Oliver’s two-story Californian house, everything about Los Angeles feels mundane, and Matthew completely estranges himself from his personal and inner life–including his grandma, whom he cares for, and the job that he was able to first encounter Oliver.

Watching Lurker – a psychological thriller through and through – I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to Adrian Lyne’s 1987 film Fatal Attraction, a deeply influential film in the genre that charts the intersection between violence and desire. However, unlike Fatal Attraction and to its merit, Lurker doesn’t trap itself in the cliché of examining how love, desire, and obsession are purely romantic. I appreciate how Russell confronts and universalises these abstract emotions through the dichotomy of an artist and a fanatic and demonstrates how the parasocial fandom relationship looks in a tangible sense. The notion of a ‘parasocial fan’ has often been purely an ‘online phenomenon’, but Russell contorts and applies this concept in a manner that feels too close to reality, which is deeply haunting.

French-Canadian actor Théodore Pellerin (Solo) is the pulse of this film. While Pellerin has yet to penetrate the mainstream, he has imprinted himself in Québécoise cinema, and within his role as Matthew, he compels, shocks, and captures the fanatic perfectly. Perhaps one of my favourite performances at MIFF so far, and I’m intrigued to see what roles he lands hereafter. Archie Madekwe is also a fabulous co-lead to Pellerin and, in this film, has the malleability to convince the audience when he has lost power, and in moments where he has it, he seamlessly and casually exerts it. Madekwe, who also starred in Emerald Fennell’s 2023 Saltburn – which is another film that resembles the power relations of Lurker – is once again terrorised and victimised by an interloping force. And just like his role of Farleigh in that film, Madekwe brilliantly reveals cracks of self-doubt and question that unmasks the egoism his status as a celebrity embodies.

Lurker intrigues with its questioning and portrayal of power, and overall, Russell presents an image of a mystified space that exists in the realm of celebrity, made more ambivalent with the presence of social media. Having left my screening still grappling with the debate of who held more power. Oliver or Matthew? By calling into question the power and influence of celebrity with the paradox that the power in question is contingent upon fandom and fanatics, it raises further questions about the ending than it answers. And with the film’s conclusion, it comes almost unforeseen, given the nature.