This article discusses the ending of the Amazon original film The Voyeurs, so it contains spoilers.
Ready Steady Cut Film Critic, M.N. Miller, said The Voyeurs is “an erotic thriller that cannot comprehend the word ‘stop’”.
The Voyeurs follows a young couple, Pippa (played by Sydney Sweeney) and Thomas (played by Justice Smith), as they move in together. They find a huge New York City loft apartment that must be rent-controlled. They are awkward and goofy together. There’s nothing like the couple they watch across the way, Seb and Julia, played by Ben Hardy and Natasha Liu Bordizza. They are beautiful, artistic, and besides having such a stupid name, Seb cheats on Julia almost daily. It makes you wonder why more guys don’t major in photojournalism.
Pippa and Thomas’s infatuation of watching the young couple turns into erotic foreplay and obsession. It’s a shame these two haven’t had their cable or sling-tv hooked up yet because Pippa can’t stop watching. So much so, Thomas wonders if he is not enough for her. They watch Seb almost choke on a small piece of food. Even Julia almost stabs the arrogant guy with the stupid name after Pippa warns her, with a computer fax (more on that later).
The next morning, they see that Seb is trying to wake Julia up. She has killed herself. Blood is everywhere, the guy is in tears, and so is Thomas. He blames Pippa for causing her suicide by not putting their Hitchcockian viewing habits. He leaves, Pippa is distraught, and of course, you know what happens. She follows Seb into a bar where she accompanies him to his apartment for some wine, a game of naked strip photographs, and Pippa rides the obsession wave trying to fill the sexual, physical void her relationship with Thomas doesn’t have.
There is just one tiny problem. Thomas came back with flowers to apologize. He then sees his girlfriend and Seb doing it on the couch for everyone to see. This brings tears to his eyes. When Pippa returns the next morning, she finds Thomas hanging from a rope. He committed suicide as well.
Amazon Original Film The Voyeurs – ending explained
But hold on. It turns out our little arrogant photographer and his not-so-dead girlfriend set the whole thing up. They made a showcase full of pictures of Pippa naked, Thomas hanging (and her finding him), them spying on them. They even had an attack set up in the ceiling monitoring and taping their every move like an episode of Big Brother.
Seb and Julia made a documentary out of it and, and then made millions. Seb, being his usual prick self, shows signs of guilt with on-camera outbursts. Julia doesn’t feel guilty at all. Seb finds this strange. They start to drink a bottle of wine left for them at their doorstep (red flag, morons) and get some more of those computer faxes claiming Thomas didn’t kill himself but was murdered. They spot Pippa across the way, and chase her across the city to her place of work, an optometrist’s office.
She explains to Seb that Julia poisoned Thomas’s drink, and before he passed out, he poured into the bird feeder (she found the birds dead on the window sill the next day). Seb asks Julia if it is true, but she passes out before saying anything to him. Seb follows next. She then somehow manages to get each of them into position to blind them by burning their retinas with a laser. In the final shot, we see the guy with the stupid name and his not-so-dead girlfriend with grey eyes, trying to look out their window aimlessly.
What does it all mean? The Voyeurs is a metaphor for perceiving things we find in entertainment that are not true to real life. What Pippa had with Thomas was real. Imperfect and lovely. She became envious of Seb and wanted to experience that kind of passion that she felt was missing in her life. Does it mean she settled? Of course not. The moral is to be self-aware and know what is authentic versus what is fabricated.
What did you think of the ending of the Amazon original film The Voyeurs? Comment below.
