Delayed Reaction: The Voyeurs

Premise: A couple become obsessed with the neighbors in the apartment across the street who never close their windows.

 

It's hard for a movie twist to lose me as completely as the one in The Voyeurs. I was fine with a Rear Window-style thriller about a two people getting dangerously involved in their neighbors' lives. It's a common and effective premise. There are actually many ways to do it. Rear Window and The Lives of Others are very different movies despite both being about surveillance. The Voyeurs was hardly the best of this kind of movie, but it held my interest. Sydney Sweeney and Justice Smith are fun as they sleuth around for ways to get involved in the lives of Ben Hardy and Natasha Lui Bordizzo. It definitely earned its erotic thriller bonafides. I'd be lying if I said that aspect wasn't part of the appeal.

 

Then the twist happened, and I was ready to turn the movie off right there. So, Hardy and Bordizzo were just putting on a show, secretly tracking Sweeney and Smith's interest in watching them. They turn it into an art show about a generational lack of respect for privacy. I could rant for pages about how that doesn't make sense. How could they be so sure Sweeney and Smith would become obsessed with them? There is no way they could've been certain about how clever Sweeney and Smith would be about the sleuthing. None of this would work if they didn't set up a laser pointer as a listening device. Then there's the plausibility of Hardy and Bordizzo pulling all this off unnoticed. Something like the scene of Hardy choking is very involved for not even being that certain that anyone is looking. There's a Truman Show aspect to this that isn't addressed. Then you stack on the fact that they actually killed Justice Smith to look like a suicide. That is a crazy escalation. If they were going to go that big, I'm disappointed the movie didn't get even bigger earlier.

 

I suppose the end is devilishly satisfying. The central quartet all play their roles well. Sweeney channels some of her White Lotus character toward the end, which she's very effective at. I don't really buy a couple that looks as collectively good as Sweeney and Smith becoming so obsessed with another couple anyway. I know it's lazy to think that pretty people can't snoop. However, if I was Smith dating a Sweeney, I can't imagine being that interested in some other couple.

 

Side Rant: Real talk for a moment. Obviously, the listening device stuff was wrong, but is it really so wrong to watch your neighbors like that? Hardy and Bordizzo have huge, always opened windows facing a multi-story apartment complex. By any definition, that's not a reasonable expectation of privacy. I guarantee other neighbors were watching them too. I don't know how sincere the movie was being about the vision of the art exhibit, but little about their message about privacy makes sense to me. Ugh. Then there's them making a point about no one reading the terms and conditions on contracts. Very original. I really hope there's more satire in this movie than I'm picking up on.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend