sunny suljic

Lurker (2025)

/ swampflix / 5 Comments

Lurker is All About Eve by way of Nightcrawler, with a little bit of The Talented Mr. Ripley thrown in for good measure. Or is it a love story, albeit a bit of a fucked up one? 

Matthew Morning (Théodore Pellerin) is working retail alongside Jamie (Sunny Suljic) at an LA boutique clothing store when mononymous musician Oliver (Archie Madekwe) comes in one day. Matthew quickly puts “My Love Song for You” by Nile Rodgers  on the shop’s sound system, and Oliver is impressed by the man’s musical taste, resulting in Matthew being invited to hang backstage at Oliver’s show that night. Oliver’s entourage member Swett (Zack Fox) and producer Bowen (Wale Onayemi) haze him a bit by making him drop his pants, but when he goes one further and loses his underpants as well, it endears him to them immediately. Matt notices a quiet member of the posse, Noah (Daniel Zolghadri) lurking in the back of the green room before he meets Oliver’s manager Shai (Havana Rose Liu), who takes note of Matty’s apparent infatuation with Oliver and recommends that he find a way to make himself useful if he wants to stick around. When he’s invited to hang out the next day at Oliver’s luxurious home, he finds himself stuck doing menial house chores like taking out the garbage and washing dishes while Bowen and Swett play Call of Duty and watch nature documentaries and Oliver largely seems apathetic to his presence. When he captures some candid footage on a low-res Sony commercial video camcorder of Oliver goofing around in the driveway on a BMX, Oliver lights on the idea of having Matty hang around and work on “the documentary,” which creates friction with Noah, who is the crew’s “official” documentarian. When Matty’s former co-worker Jamie also starts to work his way into Matty’s new social circle, Matty goes to increasingly harmful lengths to ensure that his place in the hierarchy remains unchallenged. 

Lurker is about many things. Matt’s behavior is nebulous; although he’s willing to escalate to physical harm and extortion to remain close to Oliver, the exact reasons are ambiguous enough to offer multiple interpretations. The most straightforward possibility is that Matty is simply obsessively in love with Oliver, and although Oliver himself is only ever clearly seen in the sexual company of women, Matty’s reaction to Oliver’s physical (but most likely platonic) affection demonstrates that the singer is the object of his desire. It’s clear that Shai sees Matt’s desire to be in Oliver’s orbit and may even see that attraction to Oliver as she encourages it initially, while his male friends tease Matt for “sounding like one of [Oliver’s] bitches.” Matty is clearly affected by Oliver’s attention to him, with the bits of fraternal physical affection that Oli gives him acting as an emotional drug, and Oliver’s candid vulnerability with the newest member of his entourage is perhaps too encouraging to the unstable videographer. At one point late in the film, Oliver asks Matty why he’s even around, and Matt tells him that he’s there for the same reason that everyone else around Oliver is, it’s just that he’s more driven and “better at it,” in his own words. It’s not stated explicitly, but the implication is that Oliver’s group, which he previously compared to a family of his own choosing, is made up of clingers-on and sycophants trying to ride his coattails into a life of glamour. As an audience, I don’t think we’re meant to fully believe him and his stated motivations, as this supposed reasoning aligns with some of the things we’ve seen (Matty pretends not to know who Oliver is when he first appears in the store while clearly actually being invested in impressing him with his obscure musical knowledge, which wins him a bid at the golden ring of being in Oli’s crew) but also fails to explain the more psychosexual desire that Matt clearly has. 

The latter of these reasons is on fullest display in two scenes in the film. After Matt has successfully created a situation that allows him to blackmail himself back into Oliver’s home (if not his good graces), Oliver makes an attempt to steal the evidence from Matt’s room while he sleeps, but when Matt wakes up, Oliver lies that he wanted to check in on Matt and see if there is some way to get them back to being friends. Matt seems to accept the sincerity and immediately demands that they wrestle, tangling his limbs with the musician and rolling around with him, over the latter’s protests. Still later, when Oliver is on tour, Matt shows up with a girl to the hotel room where Oliver is hooking up with a woman and the two have their sexual encounters next to one another, Matt staring intensely and lovingly at Oliver the whole time. It’s this last that finally pushes Oliver too far, but for his part, Oliver seems to enjoy the attention at times, as there’s a bit of narcissism inherent to his entire career. Early on in the film, Matt tells him that he thinks Oliver has the potential to be the biggest star in the world, and for a moment it seems like he’s pushed his own apparent sycophancy too far to be believed, but after a beat, Oliver excitedly admits that he thinks the same and that the other members of his crew aren’t pushing him hard enough. Matt feeds into Oliver’s ego and the fact that it comes with a side helping of intense yearning doesn’t set off any alarm bells for Oliver until it’s too late. 

The basic scaffolding of this narrative is, as noted above, very much like All About Eve, with Oliver as the Bette Davis/Margo Channing of the feature, a widely known star, and Matty as Anne Baxter’s Eve Harrington who seeks that same level of fame and adoration. Although he does ultimately see success, the film ends at the premiere of the documentary, and when a fan expresses admiration and inspiration, it’s like the finale of Eve in which a young girl comes to Eve’s hotel room in much the same way she once appeared at Margo’s stage door. Matty takes it further, pushing Jamie off of a ladder (after already trying to separate him from the group at the airport) when he gets jealous of Oliver’s preference for Jamie’s ideas for the album cover over Matt’s. Where Patricia Highsmith’s Ripleyness comes from is in the nature of unstated queer obsession that runs as an undercurrent throughout the whole thing. Matt’s “in love” (read: obsessed) with Oliver, wanting to be with him but also to be him, and it’s all conveyed with great attention to detail. Aside from the use of outdated camera equipment to genuinely create an aesthetic that is so desirable that it’s often recreated digitally, what Matt’s bringing to the table with his old Sony camcorder is something that could easily be accomplished through Instagram style filters, but there’s a true commitment to the essence of truth that Oliver wants to convey with his art, and there’s something to be said for that. 

What I found to be one of the most interesting things about the film is the way that it explores the nature of what it feels like to utterly hate someone who sees you better than anyone else. Although Swett and Bowen treat Matt like a pariah once he blackmails his way back into being part of the crew, he either ignores this or is completely apathetic about it, as all he really wants is what he has: access to Oliver, even if the vibe has shifted completely. Everyone’s mistrust of him and their overt hatred for him is covered by Oliver’s having to keep playing Matt’s game, and even if it feels insincere to us in the audience, it’s sufficient to feed Matt’s internal need for Oliver’s attention and validation. In the end, however, after all that Matt puts Oliver through as part of a creative vision for Oliver’s next album, when Oliver sees the resulting footage for himself, he realizes that Matt has accomplished what he said he would: push Oli when the others would let him rest on his laurels with the fame that he already has. It doesn’t hurt that Oliver himself has dubious ethics; when Matt arrives for his first show, the musician is canoodling with a woman that Swett and Bowen picked out of the crowd for him, and the fact that this is a habit for Oliver is something that Matt is able to use against him. Exactly what Oliver did that Matt has footage of is ambiguous enough that we don’t necessarily turn on him, but allows room for doubt as to how honest any of his interactions are, up to and including his claims to Matt that he can be more honest with him than any of the others. What is it in Oliver that only Matt can see and capture? Is it a genuine (if criminally obsessive and jealous) love that Matt has? Is it a consuming desire to see Oliver become the best that he can be because of that love, or because he, Nightcrawlery, wants to ride the rising waters in Oliver’s wake? It’s unclear. 

This film was on the Black List (in 2020), meaning that it was relatively easy to find the screenplay. Matt is notably less evil in the final film, as the script that I found included him treating his grandmother much more coldly and cruelly, including getting her to pay for his flight back to the US after he gets stranded in London but ignoring her at the airport and taking an Uber (in the film she picks him up without incident). All that really remains of this in the final film is a brief scene in which he yells at her when she tries to talk to him while he’s on the phone with Oliver. There’s also an entire subplot about Oliver’s elderly neighbor, whom Matt (possibly accidentally) kills and then (definitely intentionally) moves into his garage so that he can continue to spy on Oliver’s group which is left out of the film. In the final release, the most violence that occurs is when Matt pushes Jamie off of a ladder (we see him later and, other than a broken nose, he’s fine) and when Oliver’s group beats Matty after they’ve finally had enough. It’s a choice that makes for a more interesting movie to make Matty less of an out and out serial killer and inject a bit more ambiguity, despite the fact that I went into this hoping to see just that kind of obsessive violence. Well worth it. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

/ swampflix / 18 Comments

Does a bad ending, or even merely an unsatisfying conclusion, ruin a movie? I go back and forth on this a lot, sometimes within works with the same creators and producers. I considered last year’s 10 Cloverfield Lane to be one of the best movies of the year, and I really love 98% of Super 8, both of which suffer the same issue of a tonally inappropriate ending for a movie that was thematically about something other than, you know, stupid Cloverfield monsters (in the case of the former, at least it was justified by the retitle). Both of them are movies that I recommend to others with the caveats that they are nearly perfect but fail in a major way that, depending upon your consideration of the subject, may ruin your overall filmic experience.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is one of these contentious films. I sat in the theater in a completely enraptured state watching the film’s first two hours, but in the film’s final moments, those joyous feelings turned to ashes in my mouth. My roommate walked out of the theater exultant, but I was underwhelmed. But before we get there, a quick synopsis.

Surgeon Stephen Murphy (Colin Farrell) has a well-ordered and successful life, as demonstrated by the sumptuous home he shares with his loving wife Anna (Nicole Kidman) and their two children, fifteen-year-old Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and elementary-aged Bob (Sunny Suljic). He also has a secret and unusual relationship with teenaged Martin (Barry Keoghan), which he keeps from his family and lies about to his anesthesiologist partner Matthew (Bill Camp). He meets with the boy clandestinely at a diner and buys him gifts, ranging from simple ice cream cones to expensive watches. Stephen eventually reveals this relationship to his family, although he lies that he met Martin when the boy’s father died suddenly; in fact, Martin’s father was a longtime patient of Stephen’s, who died under mysterious circumstances. Stephen’s family falls under the influence of Martin’s charms, especially Kim, but each member of the family begins to fall victim of an inexplicable paralysis that seems to be of Martin’s devising.

There’s a lot going on in this film, and there’s so, so much to love, especially in its small moments of subtlety and intricacy. When I told him that I had seen it, Brandon asked if the film was as Kubrickian and giallo-inspired as he had heard; although the fingerprints that underline Kubrick’s influence are all over the film, there’s no real giallo influence that I can discern. I didn’t happen to catch The Lobster, but I am told that the emotional distance evident in dialogue and the lack of inflection that the actors use in Killing is a commonality with director Yorgos Lanthimos’s previous work. I’m not sure how that stylistic choice fit with his earlier film, but it’s a resounding success here, as the cold world of surgeons and diagnoses, children getting slapped (and worse), long walks with ice cream, and even awkward sexual advances are all treated with the same clinical dispassion, instilling the film with a feeling of extreme detachment that resonates in every scene. This only increases the mood of growing tension that is intentionally invoked, as the audience feels their anxiety rising like a tide while the characters observe the changes in their world and worldview with infuriatingly cold tempers.

Beyond the overt characterizations, there’s a lot of subtlety that will no doubt provoke discussion and inspection. Kim’s recent first menstruation is mentioned on two separate occasions, including once as a point of pride for Stephen when talking to his work colleagues following a formal speech; what’s to be made of that? Early in the film, Stephen and Anna engage in some slightly kinky hanky-panky (all edited and filmed with the same dispassionate camera work as every scene) in which Anna lies down inverted on the bed (with her head at the foot of the bed and vice versa) and pretends to be a patient under anesthesia; when Kim later attempts to seduce Martin, she assumes this same position, implying that she possesses a knowledge of her parents’ sex lives that is both incomplete and inappropriate. Every relationship possesses an animalistic charge but lacks intimacy, except for Stephen’s mentorship (for lack of a better word) of Martin, which is initially framed as potentially sexual and abusive but ultimately proves to be something equally primal but much, much worse. It’s not absent from the film, however: after foiling an unsuccessful seduction attempt on the part of Martin’s mother (one scene wonder Alicia Silverstone), Stephen later returns to their home in a rage when Martin’s true intentions are revealed, and he threatens/promises to “fuck [Martin] and [his] mother, like [Martin] want[s],” so he is at the very least aware of this tension and how it could appear, but his understanding of the motives are all wrong.

It’s the small moments in which this film proves its great worth, but paradoxically that same sparsity and minimalism in its ending left me unsatisfied as the credits started to roll. Even if you don’t make the immediate connection to the myth of Iphigenia, which is mentioned overtly in a scene wherein Stephen meets his children’s principal to investigate possible causes of their bizarre malady, the phrase “sacred deer” is bound to ping some mental connections for anyone with a familiarity to Greek mythology. Even with that knowledge, there is still an expectation for some kind of explanation for Martin’s apparently supernatural abilities, which never comes. This absence is less disappointing than one would expect, but the film still feels somehow incomplete in its final moments. Perhaps that was intentional; perhaps the evocation of feelings of incompleteness (not necessarily dissatisfaction) was the point of the film as a whole. I’d have to give it another viewing before I could say for sure, but for now, I’m left as cold as the icy blues of the film’s color aesthetic and Kidman’s eyes, although the buoyancy of the film’s choices before its final frames lifts my overall estimation.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond