New indie thriller Lurker is a tense, cautionary tale about celebrity obsession — and it made me question my own morale

When Eminem wrote 'Stan,' he was thinking about the kind of fans that show up at your front door with a gun, or attempt to assassinate a sitting president in order to get your attention.

The meaning of the term 'stan' has evolved over the years, earning a permanent place in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as a way to describe a fan who is "excessively enthusiastic" and "hopelessly devoted." Enter Lurker, a movie about a parasocial weirdo who sets his sights on an up-and-coming singer and alters his entire life in a messed-up quest to become his best, or rather only, friend. On the surface, it's a sleek psychological thriller. Underneath, it's an uncomfortable examination of self.

You're like my hero, man

Written and directed by Alex Russell (The Bear, Beef) in his feature debut, the film follows Matt (Théodore Pellerin), a seemingly harmless retail worker who lives with his grandmother. Matt's entire life changes when Oliver (Archie Madekwe), an indie pop artist on the verge of stardom, walks into the store where he works. Once Matt gets up close and personal with Oliver, there's nothing else in the world that he wants more. Suddenly, he's everywhere Oliver is, and he won't stop until he's his one and only friend.

It's a premise that immediately took me back to The Talented Mr. Ripley, with Oliver and Matt mirroring Dickie (Jude Law) and Tom (Matt Damon), or even Allie (Bridget Fonda) and Hedy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) in Single White Female. But there's an important distinction to be made here: Matt doesn't want to be Oliver. He doesn't want his friends, or his house, or his record deal. He wants to be near Oliver. He wants to be as close as he possibly can.

And that's what makes Lurker so goddamn unnerving: we can relate to being driven by jealousy, to wanting someone else's life, and even thinking that we deserve it more. It's the complete and total obsession, the unwavering need to be close, that's so upsetting, because it triggers a part of ourselves that we don't ever really confront.

For me, it's right there in the first few minutes of the film: when Oliver walks into the store, Matt grabs the aux cord and plugs in his phone to play a song he knows (from vigorous internet research) that Oliver would like and respond to. It's something I've done more than once in order to grab the attention of a crush, and as I watched the scene play out, I realized I was squirming in my seat.

Snakes in the garden

"That's what I was trying to say," Russell tells GamesRadar+, when I ask if there's a little bit of Matt in all of us. "A lot of people make these little social calculations, or avoid saying something, or try to say the right thing, or make sure they're here at the right time. They'll meet someone and pretend they haven't seen a bunch of photos of them online or something. So I wanted to start it in a place of relatability so that people could kinda go on this ride and feel like, 'Oh, I wouldn't go that far, but I sort of understand what got us there.' And because the movie is so subjective and it's from Matthew's perspective and in his shoes, you really feel every sort of cringe moment and awkwardness and his calculation – [it] feels like we're going through it too."

It does feel like the viewer is going through it, to the point where I found myself a little sad whenever the members of Oliver's posse (Zack Fox, Wale Onayemi, Havana Rose Liu, and Daniel Zolghadri) were less than friendly to Matt, or when Jamie (Sunny Suljic), Matt's coworker and sometimes friend, gets chosen by Oliver to join the group. It's the mark of good writing and great acting, because Matt is wholly insufferable and irredeemable – and only gets worse as the film progresses.

"He doesn't start out in an irredeemable place," Russell says, adding that Matt's likability comes from there being a natural "kind of a sweetness" to Pellerin."Matthew starts out as someone on the outside of a group of people he wants to hang out with. So I think that in itself is relatable. Everyone's been in a room where they want to go from being anonymous to being liked by everyone."

Keep your friends close

It's worth noting that the film is, as Russell puts it, "a 2018 period piece," adding that "there's no TikTok, there's no COVID… even the iOS and the aux cords [are] all of these pre-2020 indicators." This is weirdly important to the film's believability: there's no blaming pandemic-induced isolation or increased accessibility via social media when trying to rationalize Matt's actions. While fandom culture does, of course, directly contribute to parasociality and can cause a fan to associate obsessive behavior with a sense of belonging, Matt is a lone wolf here. He doesn't want to share his obsession with anyone else, despite his friend Jamie also being a fan. He just wants Oliver.

And don't get me wrong, it's easy for the audience to see why Matt or anyone would be obsessed with Ollie. Madekwe is an effortlessly cool, R&B bedroom pop artist in the same vein as Dijon and Rex Orange County (who also wrote the songs that Archie performs in the movie). He sings love songs and has a charming English accent paired with a smile to die for – though we don't know much about him. As we move throughout the film, he slowly begins to break down, and the more he emotes, the more we as the audience begin to feel both sorry and scared for him. This has the opposite effect on Matt, who just feels more and more in control.

Though Matt's manipulative behavior starts to take a turn for the absolute worst around 30 or so minutes into the film, the third act is when things start to feel a little like Nightcrawler, or Whiplash (two films that heavily influenced Russell's writing and direction). The tension is so high that you can almost feel Oliver's heart racing, and Swett (Fox) and Bowen's (Onayemi) blood boiling. But it doesn't culminate in the way you think it would. The ending left me gobsmacked, and Russell only smiles when I ask why he chose to close out the story this way.

"I think the fact that everyone gets what they want in the end is meant to be interpreted," Russell vaguely states, careful not to spoil anything. "It's meant to ask a question. Why is this behavior rewarded? Why is this the inevitable conclusion of this story?"

Lurker is in theaters now. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.