If your psychological thriller is centered around a man obsessed with a pop star on the cusp of superstardom, then the music itself had better sound believable enough––the musician be charismatic enough––to buy into this artist as a source of hyperfixation. The biggest, most obvious failure of Lurker, the directorial debut of Alex Russell (writer on series including The Bear and Beef) is that it treats the actual music made by its mononymous pop star Oliver (Archie Madekwe) as an afterthought, so out-of-step with current trends that it’s near-impossible to buy into the idea that he’s about to have a breakthrough, or that anybody would care this much about him. Admittedly, I’m at my most pedantic when seeing movies about pop music that don’t understand the sounds of their specific eras; I’ve never been able to warm to Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux when all the tracks sound like the Sia-inflected electro pop of the mid-teens and not the bubblegum, Max Martin-produced pop prevalent in its early-2000s setting. Lurker has the opposite issue: Oliver’s music feels about a decade out-of-date, most reminiscent of the late-2010s R&B star Khalid, whose broad, anthemic tracks about American teenage life proved to have no staying power beyond their pre-COVID era.
The movie does occasionally attempt to paint Oliver’s artistic sensibilities as shallow––tacky artwork on his bedroom walls, or the way he manages to flatten every single one of his stated influences into the same generic, confessional bedroom pop with which they’re at odds. But critiquing his vapidness is fundamentally at odds with a story of someone being dangerously obsessed with him, even if it is his naivety being toyed with by clothing-shop employee Matthew (Théodore Pellerin), who manages to find an “in” when rushing to hit play on a Nile Rodgers track when Oliver visits his store. Oliver is currently making music inspired by him and wants Matthew to attend his show later that night to see what he thinks about those tracks. Despite having no critical-thinking abilities or charisma, and with all of Oliver’s entourage seemingly disinterested in him at best, Matthew still manages to worm his way into the inner circle, entrusted with shooting a behind-the-scenes documentary of a star on the rise. What follows is a cat-and-mouse trail where you’re supposed to never know who is leading who at any time, power dynamics in that relationship continually shifting––yet, as one of them is a clear social-climber, it still couldn’t be more obvious, even when the cards aren’t in his hand.
Much like Saltburn, which also starred Madekwe, Lurker could be dubbed “The Untalented Mr. Ripley” for how much of a personality void its central character is. It’s easy to grasp how he’s manipulating situations to his advantage, but less fathomable as to why he would keep getting invited back into the inner circle after each social faux pas exposed him as a shameless careerist. The film doesn’t work as a thriller for this reason, stretching credulity in how it finds new ways to keep Matthew returning to the fold, and doesn’t succeed particularly well in critiquing the vapidness of modern fame. It’s never quite clear just how famous Oliver is supposed to be; he’s hounded in the streets by fans, lives in a fancy L.A mansion, and everyone in his orbit (including Matthew) gets tens of thousands of Instagram followers just by association. At the same time, the clubs he performs in are tiny, and the music he makes doesn’t sound like what’s been in the top 40 for several years. If Oliver was characterized as a rich nepo baby, a second-generation industry figure just waiting to be planted onto the public, these contradictions would both make sense and add some genuine punch to the satire. Instead we only learn that he ditched his surname presumably due to estrangement from his family, and that he’s now in a position where he can choose his own, fashioning a nuclear unit from his various hangers-on.
Oliver is manipulated by his ego getting stroked in vague ways; Matthew alludes to a greatness in his music without ever directly stating it, allowing Oliver to fill in the blanks for himself. It’s a master manipulation technique, allowing Matthew to appear somewhat detached instead of a hardcore fanboy jostling for attention from someone who will disregard him when he’s not being praised or worked for, but this further accentuates the issue of Matthew’s own fandom. Prior to Oliver appearing in his life, he shows no signs of obsession, even interest in the singer, yet he’s a big-enough fan to know he’s working on music inspired by Nile Rodgers. If he’s a celebrity-obsessed clout-chaser in sheep’s clothing, why are there so few signs he shows any genuine interest? Setting the movie in Los Angeles might work as a shorthand for some viewers, who understand this is a city where everybody is looking for that one industry connection to get their big break, but Lurker leans on the setting to avoid probing its lead’s psychology with any greater depth. Even by film’s end, seeing all the schemes he’s concocted to force himself to stay in Oliver’s world, I never bought him as anybody with an artistic interest he needed to share with the world.
On a more shallow note: there wasn’t even a palpable sexual obsession between the two central characters. Both times Russell does insinuate this––including a baffling third-act wrestling sequence that couldn’t be further from the charged homoerotica of Ken Russell’s Women In Love if it tried––it feels like a last-draft attempt to add something more distinctive to a character whose fixation is so broadly written it could be transplanted into any context. I can’t quite believe I’m saying this, but: say what you will about Saltburn––it at least dived into its duplicitous lead’s sexuality as more than just window-dressing. That movie may have been empty calories lazily engineered to shock, but when working with the same played-out social-climber narrative framework and broadly characterized lead as Lurker, it’s hard to argue that it doesn’t have the more engaging personality.
Lurker opens in theaters on Friday, August 22.