Sundance ’25: Disquieting Stalker Thriller ‘LURKER’ Unknowingly Lets a Fox into the Henhouse

When an obsessive fan infiltrates the inner circle of his favorite up-and-coming pop star, Oliver (Archie Madekwe)—a single-name moniker à la Prince and Beyoncé—under the guise of being an unbiased outsider, an unsettling game of cat and mouse with far-reaching implications begins. Matthew (Théodore Pellerin) sleepwalks through a lackluster existence—working a dead-end retail job, mooching off his grandmother—until Oliver steps foot into his store. A surreptitious trap is sprung in real time.

Audiences can sense immediately that something is off about this first interaction. Maybe not that a nefarious scheme is already in motion, but that Matthew is insincere. His subterfuge is almost obvious, but Oliver, perhaps as a side effect of his early-onset stardom, doesn’t seem to possess the ability to discern who in his ever-shifting orbit is a sincere friend or collaborator and who just wants to ride the coattails of his fame.

A backstage invite to Oliver’s show turns into late-night hangouts at his pad, which turns into a “job” as a documentarian, capturing grainy behind-the-scenes footage as Oliver pieces together his second album. Matthew further ingratiates himself by massaging Oliver’s ego, showering him with flattery and feeding his growing sense of invincibility. According to Matthew, Oliver isn’t just a star—he’s on the verge of becoming the most famous entertainer on the planet. The snake oil flows thick. Once again, it’s clear to us that Matthew is a fraud, a hack, an oxpecker feeding off the excess of a much larger mammalian force. But by the time Oliver realizes, Matthew’s fangs are too deeply sunk.

Just like Matthew’s fangs, writer-director Alex Russell burrows under our skin. And he has a blast toying with us while he’s there. Riding the razor-thin edge of unease born of Pellerin’s perilously nervy performance, Lurker is a psychosexual stalker thriller that, much like Matthew, knows how to hijack our emotions and wield them against us. Soon, we are putty. The lurker owns us too.

As Matthew worms his way deeper into Oliver’s personal and professional life, the veneer of him being an artistic asset slips away, revealing his true self: a leech, a hanger-on, as bloodsucking as a vampire. Soon, he’s hijacked every facet of Oliver’s life, and yet Oliver’s star only burns brighter. The parasitic relationship between a needy artist and his talentless pariah deepens, giving extra dimension and pointed meaning to what could have otherwise been a familiar fan-stalks-celebrity thriller. Their dance is a fever-dream of one-sided infatuation and yet to sever ties would be oblivion.

The lyrics of one of Oliver’s Weeknd-esque R&B ballads ask, “What’s the difference between love and obsession?” Lurker dares to suggest there isn’t one. That all love is born of obsession and, further, is incomplete without it. The will-they-won’t-they chemistry between Pellerin and Madekwe makes it seem like anything is possible: will Matthew and Oliver fight, fuck, kill each other, or reach their dreams together? Perhaps it doesn’t matter so long as they remain entangled—though Russell sticks the landing nonetheless.

Coming off a stint working on some of the best TV shows of the past decade—The Bear, Beef, and Dave, the last of which takes a novel approach to exploring fame and its consequences—Russell still manages to exceed expectations behind the camera. Lurker is lean, precise, and deceptively playful. Every stylistic gamble feels intentional, every experiment in tension masterfully controlled. The soundscape is as suffocating as Matthew’s voyeuristic, intrusive close-ups of Oliver—a sonic and visual descent into erasing personal space. This relentless proximity—to the audience, to the characters, between the characters—turns Lurker into a nightmarish portrait of obsession and ambition. In the end, one thing is undeniable: Matthew and Oliver are trapped in each other’s gravity. Whether that’s fate or doom is almost beside the point.