If Tom Ripley lived in LA in 2018 and was really into lo-fi bedroom pop, he might look something like the main character of Lurker. The debut feature from Alex Russell, The Bear and Beef writer-producer, is an elegantly creepy thriller about one super-fan’s scheme to become close to his musical idol, transposing author Patricia Highsmith’s “two-man theme” into a murkier grey territory, with parasitic attachment giving way to co-dependence that blooms into something that looks like a twisted kind of love.
The lurker of the title is Matthew (Théodore Pellerin), an isolated twentysomething who lives with his grandma and works shifts at a local vintage boutique to make ends meet. After a chance run-in with his idol Oliver (Saltburn’s Archie Madekwe) at the vintage store where he works, Matthew worms his way into Oliver’s entourage and makes himself indispensable – first as a videographer, then confidante and then as someone who has the power to make Oliver’s enviable life come crashing down. “The thing I found relatable is that no one tells you how lonely being any version of an artist is,” says Madekwe. “Oliver needs someone outside the paid [members of his team] to say ‘Yeah, I fuck with it. I get it. You’re so real.’ He needs it because he knows that he’s a bit of a fraud anyway.”
