‘Lurker’ Review: A Geek Edges Himself Into a Pop Star’s Inner Circle in Alex Russell’s Nifty and Unnerving Parable of the Pathology of Fame

variety.com:

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic “Lurker” is a tight, nifty, and unsettling little parable of the pathology of fame in our time.

It tells the story of Matthew (Théodore Pellerin), a nobody who works in one of those bare-bones L.A. clothing boutiques, and how he insinuates himself into the inner circle of Oliver (Archie Madekwe), a budding pop star who has legions of screaming fans but is trying to leap to the next level. (He still rides around in a tour bus.) Matthew becomes Oliver’s bro, his hanger-on, his social-media camera buddy.

And Matthew is grateful for the attention — so grateful, in fact, that he’ll do anything, and stop at nothing, to keep it coming.

Thirty years ago, a premise like this one might have been the fuel for a conventional Hollywood thriller. But Alex Russell, the writer-director of “Lurker,” works with a highly accomplished jittery cell-phone-camera aesthetic that makes the entire movie a mirror of what it’s about: the fleeting I-shoot-a-video-of-myself-therefore-I-am celebrity that’s become the coin of the realm in the Instagram era.