What happens when a fan gets too close? ‘Lurker’ explores the dark side of celebrity

Fandom is a funny thing in the age of social media. Spend enough time scrolling and it’s easy to feel like you really know a celebrity, and all their friends. The new film “Lurker,” a Sundance breakout in theaters Friday, explores the question of what might happen if a certain type of fan got a foot in the door, and what they might do to stay there.

Archie Madekwe’s Oliver hardly knows what’s coming when he walks into a trendy Los Angeles clothing shop. A rising music star, Oliver seems already accustomed to a certain amount of attention wherever he goes, with asks for selfies and autographs just part of the deal. So of course he’s taken aback when one of the employees, Théodore Pellerin’s Matthew, doesn’t seem to know or care who he is. Oliver doesn’t see that it’s an act and is soon asking this stranger to come around and hang with his entourage.

“At the beginning Matthew thinks Oliver has this god-given place of celebrity and success,” Pellerin said. “He quickly understands that he will have to give things to serve a certain purpose in Oliver’s world and his ego. But also that they’re not dissimilar. They’re both playing by a certain rule book that is written by Oliver. If the power becomes Matthew’s, he can also write the rules.”

The film is the directorial debut of Alex Russell, whose own star is rising. He wrote “Forks,” widely considered one of the best episodes of “The Bear,” and won an Emmy for co-executive producing the Netflix series “Beef.” His script for “Lurker,” which he wrote sort of as a challenge for himself during COVID lockdowns, immediately became a hot commodity. Madekwe remembers being bummed when he didn’t hear back after he put himself on tape to play the hanger-on.

A few years later, Madekwe’s agent called and said Russell wanted to meet him. Not for Matthew, but for Oliver.

“I had to completely rethink the film and the structure and the what it was about,” Madekwe said. “But it was most daunting to imagine myself needing to go and meet Alex and convince him that I could play somebody like this cool character.”

He needn’t have been so worried. Unbeknownst to Madekwe, Russell had been doing some stealth behind-the-scenes work. After someone recommended his name, Russell saw Madekwe in a coffee shop one day and just watched him for 20 minutes. His conclusion: This is Oliver.

Russell was cognizant of the limitations he was faced with as a first-time director making an independent film, where things like casting and hiring are often rushed.

“My goal was to get what I felt like were underrated actors,” Russell said. “People who could come in and really hit it out of the park. Then people would look at this movie and be like wow they really took a step up here. That’s kind of where you can punch above your weight if you’re making your first movie and don’t have a huge budget.”

It wasn’t just his leads either, but the full ensemble including Sunny Suljic, Havana Rose Liu, Zack Fox and Daniel Zolghadri — faces you might recognize, but names you might not yet know. Putting it together was hard work, with strict limits on budget and time, but Russell said the experience of “Lurker” was charmed nonetheless.

“It’s only because I got so lucky with decisions I made early on with casting and hiring,” he said. “So much of it is like I’m just a kid with a screenplay and everyone else has to be really good at their job.”

When it came to directing the actors, he had a simple litmus test: “Do I believe it?

“You’re watching the monitor and like do I buy that? Because everyone else is going to have to,” he said. “I just think my cast was very good. I didn’t have to force any performance.”

Often times Russell’s friends in the music world would come around set, giving the off camera times a bit of a meta quality.

“It didn’t feel a little like the movie sometimes, like just like a group of like young creatives,” Pellerin said. “There was a real LA film and music scene that was very present. That was helpful for me — it was like the fun aspect of the movie, not the hard-core humiliation.”

Many involved describe the process as uniquely collaborative. Madekwe also stepped up as a producer, which wasn’t just a vanity title. He was actually involved in many major creative decisions, including recommending Suljic, who he’d just worked with on a music video, and finding locations and some of the music for the film, including a song called “Love and Obsession,” written by Rex Orange County.

“It’s an incredibly important film for now,” Madekwe said. “The relationship that we have with people that we don’t know? I think that conversation is really interesting and exciting. But most importantly, I think it’s really exciting to be at the beginning of Alex Russell’s career and to invest into a filmmaker that I think is gonna be making incredible films for a very long time.”

The film shares some DNA with what Russell calls “obsessive thrillers” like “Whiplash” and “Black Swan.” In “Lurker,” he wondered “what if the drumming was social climbing.”

The power shifting power dynamics between Matthew and Oliver aren’t just relevant to celebrities and hangers on. It could apply to any group of friends.

As Russell explained: “You get a text from your new shiny friend and a text from your old friend: Who do you text back first?”