The Voyeurs

The Voyeurs is a rare twenty-first century example of that popular 90s genre the erotic thriller, whilst also feeling like a sexed-up Rear Window. 

Young couple Pippa (Sydney Sweeney) and Thomas (Justice Smith) move into their first home together, an apartment in Montreal. On their first night they see a couple (Ben Hardy and Natasha Liu Bordizzo) making love in the apartment directly opposite theirs. They gradually become obsessed with their love life as the man has sex with multiple women. But when Pippa meets the woman she accidentally becomes friends with her and things get complicated. 

A fair chunk of the film focuses on the eroticism of the plot as Pippa and Thomas watch all sorts of sex across the street and even have sex whilst watching their neighbours having sex. Weirdly the film isn't that erotic despite attempting to be- it's the only film I've heard of that has to re-edit in order to get a higher certificate. Really it all builds up to one steamy sex scene which defuses the sexual desire of the film and the film becomes considerably less sexy from that point on. 

The third act focus is where the thriller aspect comes into play as there are several twists. The film is entirely predictable up until a moment which literally pulls up the curtain but it's hard to enjoy the twist because it feels absurd. This is the sort of film which just about works if you don't think about it too hard but once you begin to think about the character's choices and plans it just feels totally ridiculous. 

The cast are really rather good here with Ben Hardy successfully playing a sexy douche and Sydney Sweeney is fantastic in her first starring film role after success on the small screen. Justice Smith doesn't actually have as much to do as it would first appear but he's still good when he's around, though I couldn't help but feel that Pikachu should be following him around and be somewhat disturbed by what he ended up seeing.

The film doesn't really make a moral judgement on voyeurism but it's certainly an interesting take on it. Pippa is an optometrist which and there's a focus on eyes throughout the film, a sense that someone is always watching so it may as well be Pippa and Thomas. The final scene leaves us with a really dark consequence of character's voyeurism in this film which feels somewhat fitting. 

Despite it's flaws, I quite enjoyed watching this and I think that's largely down to the strong cast. It feels to me like the focus of the film was wrong and that it tries too hard to focus on the eroticism which the film doesn't really need and doesn't lean enough into the thriller-side of things. The absurd plot could have worked if it had been treated with the right tone .