Review: The Voyeurs (Prime, 2021)
The Voyeurs is a sexy thriller that hits a few bumps along the way. Starring Sydney Sweeney and Justice Smith, the film has all the potential to be a campy, moody drama about what we see in the lives of other people’s windows. Lust, infidelity, and struggling relationships are all on the table from the beginning of The Voyeurs. But, despite plenty of twists in the plot, what happens is tonally lackluster and comes close to what a CW show would look like if it were made by HBO.
Pippa (Sydney Sweeney) and Thomas (Justice Smith), move into a Montreal highrise apartment, which happens to have wall-to-ceiling, gorgeous windows. Having dinner on their freshly unpacked living room floor, they notice their neighbors having a photoshoot in the building directly across from them. Devolving quickly into sex, Pippa and Thomas debate the ethics of watching another couple, who happen to leave their curtains wide open all of the time. This, of course, escalates throughout the film into an increasingly obsessive exchange between the “unwitting” neighbors, who have a very active sexual life (involving infidelity), and our protagonist couple. Thomas thinks they should mind their own business and Pippa needs the fire of voyeurism to keep her, perhaps slightly dulled, relationship alive.
Despite many fairly graphic and showy sex scenes, the drama of Pippa and Thomas’ relationship doesn not escalate believably, until he catches her interfering with the neighbor’s relationship by sending printed notes to the wife, Julia (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), via her wifi printer. He freaks out and breaks the binoculars she bought to spy on them before going back to bed, alone. In the morning, over coffee, they make up and Pippa promises to never spy on them again. As they embrace, Now that all this weirdness is behind them, but Pippa sees that Julia has committed suicide. Convinced she had something to do with it, and justifiably pretty freaked, Thomas leaves to stay with his sister. They break up.
If this were the last turn in the plot, if it devolved into obsessive what if’s, and if Pippa were to seek help for her broken, stalker brain, the film would have been only okay. What happens though, is many thriller-style twists and turns - sometimes for better, but often for worse. When Thomas leaves to stay with his sister, it seems the story is at its lowest point. The neighbor’s wife has committed suicide after finding out about his infidelity, thanks to Pippa. Thomas, the loving partner who is concerned about his obsessive girlfriend, leaves, maybe forever. Pippa learns a hard lesson about spying on your neighbors through their open, giant, well-lit windows. The end.
But the film is only half over.
[Note: Spoilers after this point, also content warning: Suicide]
The Voyeurs use of suicide as a plot device is not out of the ordinary for this kind of thriller, but unfortunate. While it does do some work to embody depression and the trauma of losing a partner, it does not quite make up for the fact that in the end it was all a game. The photographer neighbor had been filming Pippa and Thomas the whole time, for art purposes. At the debut of his new exhibit, it turns out that everything is on display for the audience: Pippa, who in a moment of weakness and lingering obsession after Thomas left went to the neighbor’s place and had sex with him, is pictured naked, posing for a portrait awkwardly. Photos of Pippa and Thomas moving in together, photos of them spying, photos of them fighting, and even a shocking photo of Thomas’s body hanging from the living room rafter. It was a setup.
A lot of work is made to set up the different elements that will come to play in the final third of the movie. Pippa is an optometrist, which she has spent the last decade going to school for, an element that has perhaps made her relationship lose some steam and delay a happy romance, and will ultimately use her training to blind her artist nemesis as a final act of revenge. Her optometrist mentor gives her a Japanese bird feeder, which is meant to hold water, but later reveals that the special water Thomas often drinks had been poisoned, rendering his suicide a murder by the photographer neighbors. And the extravagantly sexualized life of the neighbors was all a ruse, put on to be enticing to watch from across the way, which they describe in an interview as being “no different” than what we do on social media to each other: stalk, watch, put on a show. A window is just a screen, after all. And, of course, they did sign a waiver, which had been conveniently placed on the final page of their long lease agreement (which the artists describe as, again, “no different” than failing to read the Terms of Service for any website or device).
Overall the film was just fine. It could have been much shorter, and spent more time developing the drama and obsessions of its characters. Many scenes were filled with completely unnecessary dialogue: “look over there, through the window”, “I don’t think we should be doing this”, “don’t you feel guilty”, etc., which could have been much more effective in silent character or camera work. The soundtrack, which is generally good, interrupts many moments of emotional drama to bring a sad tune or a tense lofi beat, which is well within the modern style of films in 2021, but annoying and needless.
In the end, the movie pays off all its promises. Voyeurism is at the heart of the film and it is sexy, but also it comes with a mile of guilt and judgement. The acting is good, but the writing is only serviceable for them to work with. Everything wraps up in the end. Bad guys get what they deserve. The protagonist walks away with a little bit of vengeance.