The Voyeurs (2021)
“You want to become friends with the neighbours that we’ve been stalking?” – Pippa.
The Voyeurs (2021)
Directed by: Michael Mohan
Written by: Michael Mohan
Starring: Sydney Sweeney, Justice Smith, Ben Hardy, Natasha Liu Bordizzo
This is, without a doubt, one of the worst movies I’ve watched this year. And not in the cute, “oh this had a tiny budget and therefore it’s funny to laugh at how bad the acting and production quality is.” It’s pretty well shot and has good actors. It’s just the stupid, stupid, stupid story. This plot is more ludicrous than the latest Fast and Furious movie.
The film focuses on couple Pippa (Sweeney) and Thomas (Smith), who have just moved into a new apartment in Montreal. They begin spying on their neighbours across the street, but spying turns into obsession for Pippa when she starts meddling in their lives.
Now, one thing I do have to say – they marketed this film well. When I watched the trailer for this, I thought – cool, it’s a thriller in a similar vein to Rear Window and the modern rip-off Disturbia – interest in the lives of strangers that then escalates into something more exciting. I’m fully down for that. But no, this was just downright terrible.
Without revealing the plot, it is very clear that scriptwriter Michal Mohan believes that adding a twist and subverting the audience’s expectations is the only real way to write a movie. And the first two twists, this was fine. I agree - a good twist is essential in a thriller film. And like I said in my Wild Things review, multiple twists are also good, but ONLY IF THEY MAKE ANY PLAUSIBLE SENSE AND CONNECT TO THE REST OF THE STORY. Mohan must’ve missed this class, because the final thirty minutes of this film is complete mayhem. He starts adding twists for the sake of shock value, but these twists can be debunked with something that happened only two minutes earlier. It’s the equivalent of someone saying “1 + 2 = Fish.” No it doesn’t. That’s not how you write a movie.
And I know this sounds wanky, but even without the twists, I didn’t know what this movie was trying to SAY. The message made no sense. Don’t be crazy? Don’t spy on people? Was it an edgy metaphor for technology being a way people can spy on us? Who gives a shit – the movie gave me no reason to care when it became a no holds barred twist-a-thon. To quote my girlfriend, “That had so many twists it spiralled out of control.”
This film was an absolute mess. It didn’t know what it was trying to be, there was no coherent message, the story made no sense at all, the twists were just so bloody stupid, and Mohan owes me two hours of my life back.
Rating: 3/10