A transfixing of moral story turned on a smart head, “Lurre“Opens with an Overture: its protagonist, Matthew (Théodore Pellerin), goofing around for a camcorder with a friend. When the person holding the camera joke, Matthew asks where he sees himself in five years, Matthew responds sincerely. “I already have everything I want,” he says, stealing a glance into the lens.
Flush back to previous times, when Matthew lives with his grandmother and works as a retail employee in a hip clothing store in Los Angeles. In Walks Oliver (Archie Madekwe), a pop music artist who is known enough to cause a mumble among the shop protectors. Matthew, Abuzz of anticipation, shows up on a track that impresses VIP, and the next thing he knows he is folded into the small, sykofantic entourage by not fully friends and not fully partners who are lucky to follow Oliver on their excursions.
So a parable of obsession and loneliness related to such immediacy begins that even its relatively low efforts begin to feel like life or death. In his debut function, author/director Alex Russell (who has written for the series “Dave” and “The Bear”) is captured viscerally the complex dynamics of hierarchical friendship, where a fear of foreigner and desire for belonging can drive people to the brink. The film’s biggest performance is its attention to the nuances of how these men use mockery or mockery to rise a rung on their narrow social ladder – and if “”Lurre“Eventually, for some genre tropes and a handful of history, it is released, it compensates for its limitations in perspective and the overall strength of its filmmaking.
After Matthew catches Oliver’s attention in the store, he screams quickly. Soon he makes himself useful around the star’s Los Angeles cushion, performs chores and sucks up to his friend’s circle. At this point, Matthew is still at the bottom of the hacking order, an appendix and Acolyt who understands the delicacy at their station. We witness his wild desperation to maintain his status in scenes at home, where he screams at his grandmother not to interrupt him while he is on the phone and recovering Oliver’s videos to study his taste and habits. There is a derivative feeling for these later moments; We have seen portraits of blind obsession before, and at this time in the movie you may wonder where Russell will take the relatively familiar story.
These social hierarchies change in a strong scene in a pasture. Oliver’s Crew has gathered to make a music video, but soon into the photography realizes the group’s videographer Noah (the talented up-and-comer Daniel Zolghadri), realizes that he has missed his camera batteries. Oliver senses an opportunity and whips out his grandmother’s old camcorder and suggests that he attaches it to a sheep’s head for a point of view. It is at best an intermediate idea, and the composition is completely off. But it is regardless of Oliver, who takes the idea and whose approval is the only one that is important. Dark fun and effectively the scene proves a point that Matthew seems intuit: every power structure is flexible if you are willing to challenge its shibboleths.
All the time, Russell and Kinematographer Pat Scola (“Pig”, “Sing Sing”) show an urgent understanding of where to place the camera to best calibrate perspectives and emotions. A memorable example occurs after Matthew has risen to the position of Oliver’s Rightand Man, and has even invited his own friend, Jamie (Sunny Suljic from “Mid90s”), to a music industry party. Jamie is a relatively innocent and stops winning over Oliver’s Entourage, much to Matthew’s Chagrin. When Oliver and his friends Fawn (quite ridiculous) over Jamie’s ugly handmade sweater, Scola trains her camera on Matthew’s face and captures shades of envy, silent rage and panic. These aesthetic flowers find a hearing staff in Kenneth Blume swelling, spectral points, which alternate between sinists and ecstatic.
Oliver-a Gen-Z-CUSP singer a la Dominic Fike-starts the story as a fairly simple character. He enjoys the influence he exerts over those around him, which explains his tendency to hand pick fans and convert them into lacquer. But as history develops, Russell shows how Oliver’s fame is a foreign experience. Through small appearance and line deliveries, Makekwe shines as he embouishes olives with the genuine vulnerability of a young man who tends to doubt himself and his work and who distracts himself from anxiety through uninterrupted pleasure.
Pellerin, perhaps best known for his memorable turn in “never rarely sometimes”, is a worthy match for Makekwe. He is a talented physical artist, with his gawky frame and large, difficult hands useful tools as he switches from anxiety to anger and back again. Matthew and Oliver’s adaptation when characters are thrown into sharp relief when film reaches a fairly far -reaching turning point. The events – as the movie all except jump through, so that the viewer does not start to question its probability – turns the tables so that Oliver becomes see Matthew’s shades, rather than vice versa. In a flourishing on the nose, Russell gets this in the face with James & Bobby Purify song “I’m Your Puppet.” Later, the filmmaker literally takes the trend further when Oliver and Matthew jockey for dominance are made visually in a homoerotic wrestling match.
These latter scenes of power struggle suffer from some unevenness compared to their previous counterparts, which capture the subtlety for social maneuvering better than most. Still, when the third act finally arrives, Russell deserves credit for making the bold decision to deny their characters for their operation and instead end the film on a cynical note. “Lurker” is a movie about lonely young men who know that more emptiness at the top of their social ladders is waiting for them. Yet they climb the same way.
Rating: B+
“Lurker” premiered at 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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