"Lurker"

 ☆☆☆½ 

There's something about the title Lurker that implies — not quite promises, but more than suggests — a very different movie than Lurker turns out to be. It isn't about a stalker, not in the traditional sense, and it isn't about someone who sits around on the sidelines and watches. So if you go into this movie as I did, knowing nothing about it except the title, you'll be in for a lot of surprises.

There's no way I'd ever want to ruin any of them, because, at least until it starts to come apart a bit in its final third, Lurker is a movie that is worth seeking out. It will come as no surprise to anyone who has read this blog even a little that I recommend seeing Lurker in a movie theater, and if you do and you're lucky enough to see it with a responsive, appreciative audience as I did, you'll have a classic moviegoing experience — feeling absorbed by the movie, yet also responding to the vibe of the audience. Lurker benefits from that sort of response.

Revealing anything about the story will be saying too much, but it bears mentioning that Lurker has a long and impressive lineage, not just in the background of its writer-director, Alex Russell, who wrote for the TV series Beef and The Bear, but also in intense movie thrillers that ...

Damn it. There I go again. Okay, fine, it's giving nothing away to say that Lurker is a thriller, and a very good one, though also one that falls victim to the same things that have long tripped up thrillers — it's got a great setup, an amazing follow-through, but it stumbles as its nears its end. The careful structure and intricate plotting that sees everyone in the film wind up in the same awful place near the end starts to come undone. Lurker lets the audience do what a thriller like this must never, ever let the audience do: ask questions. "But what about ... " and "Wait, didn't he say earlier ..." and "I don't understand, I thought ..." are not things that should run through an audience's mind in the last 20 minutes of a movie like this, but phrases like that kept creeping into my thoughts.

Key moments that should surprise or shock or unnerve and vaguely confusing, and even though — this is important — Lurker ends on a perfect note, there's no way to deny it gets there in the hardest possible way. I wanted Lurker to be as clear about its intentions and its characters' motivations near the end as it was at the beginning, and the movie frustrated me.

That's not the fault of its cast, particularly its two lead actors, the unnervingly ingratiating Théodore Pellerin and the effortlessly charismatic Archie Madekwe, who perform an odd and unexpected dance that in some of the best possible ways reminded me of characters in a Hitchcock film. The way they meet and then ...

Oops. No. I'm not going to reveal more. Despite its flaws, which are not inconsiderable, Lurker remains spellbinding in part thanks to these two actors and a flawless supporting cast who manage to feel relaxed and natural and effortless even while they tell a story that is far more deeply plotted and carefully controlled than it seems.

There are so many ways in which Lurker could have been better ... but even more, and more catastrophic, ways it could have gone wrong. That it mostly gets it right is worth celebrating, and Lurker is a movie worth seeing, and letting get under your skin — which it will. Those two lead actors will be sure of it.

AMC Burbank 6 — Sept. 6, 2025

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