The Voyeurs

The Rear Window formula is both reliable and shopworn. On the one hand, everyone has a touch of voyeur in them. If you don’t think you do, see if you can keep from looking at an accident scene next time you drive by. There’s plenty of gold to mine with voyeurism as a hook for a movie. But it’s also a plot hook that’s been done a hundred times, and has few fresh permutations left to offer the world. Doing yet another version puts a movie at an automatic disadvantage. It has to find a way to make the tired and familiar feel different. The Voyeurs does offer a new approach, at least for my eyes. A young couple moves in together and notices the people in the apartment across the street are not afraid of having the curtains open at all times. At first, our main couple, Pippa and Thomas, gets a kick out of it. And then it starts to become an obsession of Pippa’s, especially as it becomes obvious the man is cheating. The twist in the formula here is that what happens in the apartment across the way isn’t the threat; it’s the watching itself, becoming a wedge between Pippa and Thomas. I fully expected this to be Rear Window meets Eyes Wide Shut, and to an extent, it is. The Voyeurs is definitely an erotic thriller, and it is not afraid to be so. It isn’t “20% of our movies sex scenes” like 90’s erotic thrillers, but it isn’t shy about sex being a component of the film. Sometimes, it lays on the eroticism a bit thick, but believe it or not, it’s all in service of the story (well, the husband being a photographer that sleeps with all his models, I’m not sure if the models were in on it, but that’s beside the point). If you’re looking for a sexy movie for a date night, you could do a lot worse than this, especially with a young, attractive cast. That cast is led by Sydney Sweeney. This is the second movie of hers I’ve seen now. I was not impressed by her in Immaculate, but here, she showed me why she’s gotten so much attention. She’s definitely more than just a pretty blonde with an ample chest. She’s that too, but she does have talent. And the story is, up to a point, well told. The way both Pippa and Thomas are intrigued, and even turned on, but Pippa slowly becomes obsessed and wants to involve herself in their lives while Thomas doesn’t, leading to their relationship deteriorating, is that new twist, which also introduces a new element: the morality of acting on information discovered by voyeurism. In Rear Window, there was no question about acting; there was a murder being committed. Here, though, there is no crime. Yes, a husband is cheating on his wife, but is that the neighbors’ business? And if it was so easy for Pippa to become enraptured with the goings on across the way, was she as invested in her relationship as she believed? But the movie does have two big flaws. The first is being overlong by a good 15-20 minutes. At two full hours, this movie is more padded than a pillow store. There are several scenes that just go on and on, squeezing the momentum out of the movie when it needs it most. Then there are the twists — namely the big one, which I won’t spoil — that is interesting, but raises a whole new level of questions that the movie tries to waive away. And just when you thought the movie was done after the twist, there’s a little more than puts credulity through a taffy puller. While the movie ends on a … let’s call it a balancing of the scales ending … it still leaves a sour taste. Overall, The Voyeurs is a decent watch, perhaps a little too clever for its own good, but still clever enough to defy expectations and raise some thought provoking moral questions. I didn’t have high hopes for it. What I got was better than I expected. Can’t complain too much about that.