Lurker Review
🍿 MOVIES
Lurker is a gritty, slow-burn thriller that fuses the social power plays of Mean Girls, the emotional intimacy of Moonlight, and the psychological tension of The Gift.
Every now and then, a film sneaks into my psyche and refuses to leave. It’s rarely a blockbuster or a high-gloss production. More often, it’s a slow-crawling thriller with a little grime under its nails. For years, that film was The Gift (Jason Bateman, Joel Edgerton). The quiet menace, the pacing, the slow unspooling of character; it’s been my cinematic comfort food. So when I saw Lurker described by Zach Fox as a “Mean Girls with scary music,” I knew I had to find it.
Four viewings later, I can confirm: Lurker is Mean Girls meets Moonlight meets The Gift.
A weird, brilliant cocktail that shouldn’t work, but absolutely does.
Mean Girls {trailer}
At its core, Lurker is a study in power and proximity. The film follows a rising musician and his circle of the hangers-ons and bystanders as their relationships buckle under the weight of fame, access, and attention.
Like Mean Girls, it’s a story about emotional immaturity disguised as dominance. The characters’ antics — bullying, joking, posturing — feel like high school behavior translated into adulthood. The group dynamics are driven by social survival: who’s in, who’s out, who’s close enough to the star to feel important.
Instead of high school cliques, it sets fame as the new cafeteria.
Moonlight {trailer}
Where Lurker gains its depth is in its portrayal of intimacy among men, especially young men navigating freedom, desire, and identity in public and private.
It’s not explicitly queer, but it’s charged with the same tension that Moonlight explored so beautifully: the blurred lines between aggression and affection, admiration and obsession. The camera lingers too long in moments of wrestling, laughter, and touch, leaving some mystery around what emotions actually live there.
Like Moonlight, Lurker is both tender and uncomfortable. The grainy texture, the quiet pauses, and the way the sound design pulls you into the main character’s loneliness — it’s a coming-of-age story hidden inside a psychological thriller.
The Gift {trailer}
The psychological manipulation that underpins Lurker is where it echoes The Gift. Both films explore the eerie pivot from obsession to retaliation, and the thin line between victim and villain.
But Lurker pushes the question further. What happens when both people are benefiting from the toxicity?When power, access, and abuse coexist, and everyone involved keeps choosing the arrangement anyway?
It’s a haunting reflection of our celebrity era — the “but they were there, too” defense, the blurred lines between loyalty and complicity. Lurker doesn’t moralize; it just sits you in the discomfort and asks you to look closer.
cinematic texture
Aesthetically, Lurker is grainy, gritty, and intimate. It looks cheap in a deliberate way — like the visuals are caught on the edge of a memory. The music (which deserves its own review) acts as both heartbeat and hallucination, grounding you one minute and disorienting you the next.
wrappin’ it up
Lurker is not for everyone. It’s uncomfortable, ambiguous, and heavy with subtext. But if, like me, you love a slow-crawl thriller that trades jump scares for psychological ones, it might become your new fixation.
It’s a film about boys becoming men, the allure of being chosen, and connection contorted by control.
Watch it if you loved:
the social chess of Mean Girls
the quiet ache of Moonlight
the psychological games of The Gift
Briaan L. Barron is a media and cultural studies writer, brand architect, and CEO of Heye Frequency, a creator-led marketing agency. Based in Seattle, she has led marketing efforts for a broad spectrum of brands, from Amazon to the region’s most recognized cultural nonprofits. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and grad school dropout of Boston University’s MFA program in Film & Television Studies, Briaan’s work centers on liberating overlooked voices from personal and systemic barriers to true autonomy.
