Fame! I'm gonna live forever
In the attention economy, celebrity is both the means and the ends. The cameras and eyes turn to you, and so do the spoils: not just money, but constant validation and recognition. At the upper end, the superstar level, you get sex and access to whatever you want. And with celebrity comes a proportionally long wake of coattail riders and chum feeders. The bigger the fame, the bigger the stakes, the more desperate and cunning the leeches need to be, and that’s the topic of Lurker, the debut film for writer-director Alex Russell.
The leech, in this case, is Matthew Morning (Théodore Pellerin), who starts the film as a nobody working the floor at a trendy clothing store when rising pop star Oliver (Archie Madekwe) wanders in. Matthew has clearly done the homework: he cues up a deep-cut track on the store’s speakers, delivers a few perfectly calibrated compliments, and makes himself useful to Oliver’s ego. Before long, Oliver is sliding him a backstage pass, then ushering him into the entourage, then bringing him on tour as a yes-man and in-house documentarian for the new album cycle. It’s a class fairy tale in the Instagram era.
What’s slippery and fun is that Russell never cracks Matthew open for us. We see him only from the outside, calculating and adjusting. Is he a genuine music lover and Oliver superfan who just wants proximity to the glow? Or is he merely a fame-starved schemer who’d latch onto anyone whose face has appeared in Entertainment Weekly? The relationship between Matthew and Oliver grows increasingly intertwined and charged, their mutual support and private moments crossing into homoerotic territory, particularly in the third act. Meanwhile, Oliver as a musician is neither a joke nor a genius; Russell smartly pitches him as a real mid-tier pop act, capable enough not to come across as a parody, shallow enough that it all feels expendable.
Circling this pair is a constellation of hangers-on who keep the Oliver machine humming. Noah (Daniel Zolghadri), an older friend in the circle, finds himself edged out as Matthew becomes the new favorite, clinging to his spot with increasing panic. Of course, that cycle must repeat itself, and by the film’s midpoint, Matthew’s old co-worker Jamie (Sunny Suljic) shows up, charms Oliver, and starts siphoning away the attention Matthew thought he’d secured. The savvy Shai (Havana Rose Liu) and others float through as collaborators, stylists, and content generators. Everyone is both a person and a job description. You start to see Oliver’s “friends” less as individuals and more as organs in a creature dedicated to maintaining the Oliver brand: they stage social media posts, punch up lyrics, appear in videos, and in exchange get a sip of the nectar of virality. The parasitism ultimately goes both ways; fans definitionally need celebrities; celebrities definitionally need fans.
The movie is at its best when it just investigates this arrangement, tracing the highs and lows of various characters and their codependencies. It’s a subdued, queasy blend of dark comedy and thriller beats, shot with a bit of docudrama naturalism that makes the whole thing feel real and tense. Russell, whose past work has included writing and producing on The Bear and Beef, brings some of the tense-comic instincts and work-as-identity themes, trafficking in low-key humiliation for its characters.
The most evocative part of Lurker is the way it depicts the abstract notion of “parasocial relationships” as a real human connection, both intimate and dangerous. Movies have captured this in different ways before, of course: I haven’t seen it, but I understand Misery to be an example. But Lurker depicts it in a way that reflects modern ideas of virality and fandom that I haven’t seen before. Russell depicts the celebrity himself in ambivalent terms: Oliver insists that only a chosen few see the “real” him, that there’s more to him than the surface the world knows… even as he eagerly reaps the benefits of that manufactured version of himself. Matthew, in turn, builds a life not on his own self or values, but merely on his proximity to Oliver. They need each other, but only as long as the arrangement keeps generating good content and no tough questions.
Eventually, the screws tighten. Lurker’s third act tilts into more overt thriller territory: blackmail, conspiracy, bursts of violence. Structurally, it fits; thematically, it tracks with the story Russell’s been telling about how far someone will go to stay in the frame. But it’s also where the movie feels the most contrived and heightened, like it must outdo itself and push its ideas to their limits instead of trusting the quieter, more chilling social maneuvering it establishes well in the first hour. The last act more or less works, though the epilogue is severely misguided: The final scene is a flash-forward that is both ludicrous and an on-the-nose announcement of a thesis statement, that it takes monsters to thrive in this celebrity ecosystem. If the film had cut one scene earlier, it would have left us in a much richer and messier ambiguity about what it all means and what the future holds for the morally compromised characters.
Even when the plotting escalates, the performances keep the film steady. Pellerin plays Matthew as both calculating, bordering on psychopathic at moments, and almost heartbreakingly ordinary, letting brief flickers of panic or triumph leak through his carefully pleasant exterior. Madekwe makes Oliver a fascinating, very human mirror to Matthew. Both are hungry and savvy, so you can imagine these two swapping roles in another life. Their scenes together crackle with shifting power and currents of intimacy. The supporting players are uniformly good, too: Liu continues her run as a sharp supporting presence (between this and Hal and Harper and a few upcoming projects, she’s suddenly everywhere), and Zolghadri once again nails a very specific desperate-dirtbag wavelength I’m always here for.
As a debut feature, Lurker is an assured statement. Russell’s control of tone is very strong. The way he wrings maximum discomfort and bitter humor from each scene suggests good storytelling instincts and bode well for his future work. Next to some of the more arch satires of fame and obsession in recent years (The Menu comes to mind), his approach feels refreshingly grounded. And compared to the year’s other pop-star parasocial drama, Opus, Lurker is practically The Godfather. It’s not the densest or most profound film of 2025, but as a portrait of modern fame and the complicated social ripples it creates, this is a sharp, entertaining, and thought-provoking film.
Is It Good?
Good (5/8)
Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.