The Voyeurs: Film Review 

Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Ben Hardy, Justice Smith, Natasha Liu Bordizzo

Director: Michael Mohan

Billed as a film "that breathes new life into the erotic thriller", the Michael Mohan-scripted and directed The Voyeurs feels like it belongs in the late 90s (even with its obvious Rear Window ripoff edges) - and certainly some of its standards feel very much of an era untouched by the MeToo movement.

The story centres on young couple Pippa and Thomas (The White Lotus' Olivia Mossbacher herself Sydney Sweeney and Justice Smith), who've moved into a beautiful loft apartment, where everyone has enough money to live, but apparently no one has enough money to buy blinds or curtains.

After celebrating their move, the duo becomes increasingly obsessed with the sex life of their neighbours across the street (Hardy and Bordizzo) with Pippa using it as a tool to try and spice things up with Thomas.

However, they soon discover one of their neighbours is cheating, sending them into a moral quandary - spy some more on them to try and help or walk away....and their choices could end up being deadly.

It's obvious what Mohan's trying to do here - titillate as well as try and spill a thriller that is engaging and intriguing with a central mystery to solve, and a feeling of rabbit-hole level obsession. But thanks to a combination of some truly awful dialogue and some plotting that's just absurd, The Voyeurs emerges as a strong contender to be uttered in the same sentence as the words "Fifty" and "Shades."

Sweeney acquits herself well, giving her ophthalmologist assistant a sense of naive innocence provoked into guilty desire - even if the male gaze of the camera treats her more as an object in some scenes - a luxury not afforded to her male counterparts.

Smith is gifted some truly awful dialogue, crippling his Thomas character and some motivations as a partner that seem unfathomable given how once-over-lightly the script treats both its leads. And certainly late in the film expectations are hard to account for when the reasons to care are jettisoned so early on.

In many ways, The Voyeurs wants to be a spiritual successor - albeit subconsciously - to the likes of the notorious Sliver and others of its time, when luridly trashy erotic films failed so miserably to enter the mainstream.

With continual close ups of eyes, because that's where Pippa works, the film feels like it's trying to hard, and wooden acting from some of its cast and leering lingering close ups sit queasily on the screen.

Ultimately, Amazon's original movie strategy feels like it's misfired here, sending all those involved scurrying for better things. Certainly for Sweeney, after the promise she so demonstrated in The White Lotus, it feels like a massive step backwards and a film that's to be forgotten, but will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.

The Voyeurs streams on Amazon Prime Video from September 10.