(L–R) Writer-director Alex Russell, Théodore Pellerin, Archie Madekwe, and Havana Rose Liu on stage for the premiere of “Lurker” at Eccles Theater in Park City. (Photo by George Pimentell/Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)
By Jordan Crucchiola
With the second week of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival fully underway, Eccles Theater plays host on January 28 to another thrilling premiere from a first-time feature director. Programmer Sudeep Sharma welcomes writer-director Alex Russell to the stage, calling his film Lurker a “fresh take on modern fame, online fan culture, social status, and social disorder.”
After greeting the audience, Russell shares an entry from the dream journal he keeps in his notes app. In his dream, Russell was debuting at the Festival to a full house, however, the entire audience was facing away from the screen. Dream-Russell waved his arms and tried to convince everyone to actually face the film, but, “The sound of the movie drowned out my pleas for everyone to turn around, and I could feel the confusion and the giggling. Like, ‘What the fuck is this movie? There’s no picture. They’re letting anything into Sundance these days.’”
But it didn’t stop there! After getting “scathing” reviews, dream-Russell had to create a social media account to explain that the movie wasn’t actually bad — people just watched the wrong way! Fortunately, a single dream critic was able to perceive the filmmaker’s vision, proclaiming it an “experimental” success. Russell then concludes his story by telling the audience, “So anyway, looking at you all here tonight — facing the direction of the screen — we’re already doing so much better than my wildest dreams.”
It’s fitting that Russell, a writer and producer for TV shows like The Bear and Beef, would introduce the premiere of Lurker with a layered story about his dreams since the movie itself plays like a gauzy, unnerving dream — or nightmare. The story centers on Matthew (Théodore Pellerin), who works retail at a clothing store when he encounters the mesmerizing Oliver (Archie Madekwe). It’s clear to us that Matthew is a fan of Oliver, a hot new pop artist on the verge of major stardom, but Matthew immediately postures otherwise, acting as if he’s wholly unaware of the singer and his work. This staged innocence deceives Oliver into putting his trust in Matthew, rapidly bringing him into Oliver’s inner circle.
We know we can’t trust Matthew, but Oliver can unpredictably be as manipulative as he is charming, leaving the audience unable to fully embrace him as its moral touchstone. In the post-premiere Q&A, Madekwe addresses Oliver’s awareness of his hold over people. “It’s not something I would like to take with me, but something I’ve never really felt before was the way he holds power in a space,” says the actor. “To feel like you have everybody circling you, and you have everybody ready to wait on you hand and foot, that kind of power is very intoxicating. Having that thing was a very interesting feeling that I liked for then — and never again.”
Oliver’s entourage in Lurker is a supposedly tight network of collaborator friends, but there’s a constant edge to the group, with everyone hinting at a nervousness that they could be replaced or demoted to the status of hanger-on. “The most vicious thing that can be said to [Matthew] is, ‘You’re a fan,’ because it separates him from what he believes himself to be as a part of this group,” explains Russell. “It’s saying, ‘You are Other. You are not the thing that you’ve been working so hard to pretend to be.’” Madekwe adds onto the point, saying, “Being a fan all of a sudden rips that umbilical cord and detaches that emotional connection that you have to the person. It puts you at a distance immediately, and that was death in this film.”
As Matthew’s behavior becomes more troubling, the viewer searches for a character to truly root for as they are sucked into Matthew’s machinations. At multiple points in the movie, the song “I’m Your Puppet” by James & Bobby Purify provides a lyrically resonant but tonally destabilizing motif. As the narrative unfolds, the question of who the puppet really is evolves. Lurker isn’t a bombastic movie, but it refuses to let the audience relax into a neat “good” versus “evil” binary. “I wanted this to be subjective in a way where people could actually relate to what [Matthew] was doing and we were in his shoes, like, ‘Damn. Have I maybe done something, or wanted to do something like this? Or have I been made uncomfortable in a social calculation that made me want to manipulate someone?’” Russell then gives an extended pause as the audience giggles at the possibility of narrative projection. “Uh, anyway. It’s just fiction.”
