Arka Mukhopadhyay
Michael Mohan’s erotic thriller ‘The Voyeurs’ falls short of surprises, but a bold and emotive performance by Sydney Sweeney keeps the drama taut. The story revolves around Pippa and Thomas, who move into a new apartment in downtown Montreal to kickstart a new life together. But as they pry in the affairs of their neighbors, a menacing fate awaits the pair.
The intriguing, bold, and salacious story has a lot to unravel, and the viewers take something by the end. In the end, the movie is a commendable exploration of the human psyche. While we think we are in control of our realities, we become players in others’ schemes. Without further reminiscing, let us probe into the final moments of the story in detail. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Voyeurs Plot Synopsis
Pippa and Thomas are a newly hitched couple who move into a loft apartment in an affluent neighborhood of Montreal. They are ecstatic to be in their new home, but suddenly, Thomas’ eyes catch the ongoing action in the apartment next door. The couple who lives on the other side of the street is having steamy foreplay, which leads to sex, while Thomas and Pippa gobble up the scenes from their binoculars. Pippa works in the eye clinic L’optique as a secretary of Dr. Sato. The doctor gives her a housewarming present.
Thomas and Pippa grow more and more interested in their neighbors, which gradually turns into an obsession. They christen the couple with imaginary names Bryan and Margot, who, we come to know, are Seb and Julia. Thomas is a musician and producer with commendable gadgetry skills, and on Pippa’s insistence, they crash Seb’s party, dressed up as Zorro and his aide. They install a mirror in their home so that they can reflect a laser and listen to the waveforms of the interior.
As it becomes apparent, Seb is an eccentric photographer with adulterous interests. One night, Seb and Julia have a fight, Seb breaks Julia’s glasses in a fit of toxic rage, and she appears at Pippa’s eye clinic for a new pair of glasses. Pippa and Julia bond together, and then Pippa sends a couple of emails to Seb’s printer. As the mails get auto-printed, reading them apparently makes Julia realize Seb’s slew of affairs. Through the binoculars, Julia goes to assail Seb but kills herself instead. But after a seeming tragedy, Pippa comes to know that she is merely a subject in a sprawling enterprise, but as with every subject, she has the choice of revenge.
The Voyeurs Ending: Is Thomas Dead or Alive?
After Julia’s seeming death, Thomas is overtaken by a guilty conscience, and he abruptly breaks up with Pippa. Pippa goes into depression as she is seduced by Seb, who is apparently consumed by Julia’s loss. One day, while drinking, Pippa intently looks at Seb, who suddenly looks back. Her glass falls on the floor and shatters in pieces. Then she sees Seb going into the bar in the corner and follows him. Seb sees her and sparks off a conversation. Pippa knows where this is going, and she plays along till the very end. However, early in the morning, Thomas returns with some flowers hoping to apologize.
He walks up the stairs, goes for a drink that tastes terrible, and pours some in the Japanese birdhouse that Dr. Sato gifted Pippa. While doing this, his eyes find Seb having sex with a woman. He gets suspicious because didn’t this man’s girlfriend die a few days ago? But then, he looks through the binoculars and finds that the woman is none other than Pippa. Pippa comes back home after her stint with Seb and sees Thomas hanging from the ceiling. Thomas is definitely dead, but the abrupt death raises some more questions. There may be a chance that Thomas killed himself from shock, but the future progression of the story makes us think otherwise.
Is Thomas Murdered? Who Killed Thomas?
After discovering Thomas in that suspended state, Pippa looks down the window and finds a few dead birds on the rails. Reasoning that the birds must have drunk the water from the birdhouse, she opens it to see the insides. There are traces of the same drink that is lying on the floor, which Thomas drank right before passing away. Adding two and two, Pippa comes to realize that somebody poisoned the drink in Pippa’s absence.
After Thomas’ death, Pippa’s life passes in silence, and she apparently begins to dissociate. She goes to her best friend Ari and tells her the plan of visiting Seb’s exhibition. Seb’s exhibition, however, is centered on the object of Pippa and her peeping. The ending reveals that Julia was the one who poisoned Thomas for their twisted art installation. Seb asks Julia whether she feels guilty, and in reply, Julia points out the amount of money they made from the exhibition.
We initially think the theory of Thomas’ murder to be a fabrication of Pippa’s unsettled mind, but the exhibition of Seb and Julia makes us realize that the couple was the orchestrators of the series of events. The art had all the ingredients of success barring a tragic aspect – which the couple can’t stress enough during the opening speech of the ceremony.
Thomas’ apparent murder brings out the tragedy in the story. However, one may ask whether Julia poisoned only the drink and nothing else in the refrigerator. It is quite a long shot for Julia to predict that Thomas would drink the poison right after entering the house. But with the sequence showing Julia poisoning the drink, we can conclude that Thomas was indeed a victim of their art installation.
What Happens to Seb and Julia?
The grand exhibition makes apparent that Seb and Julia are the orchestrators of the tale. Julia is not dead, which becomes clear as daylight as she comes out of the crowd to greet Seb on the stage. Their new exhibition concerns Pippa and Thomas. While Pippa and Thomas thought that they were the voyeurs in the front row of a movie, they were, in fact, the subjects in a bigger enterprise. The expose is perhaps criminal, but so was Thomas and Pippa planting microphones in the room. Therefore, Pippa can’t take legal action, but she has a choice as a subject.
Seb and Julia make a lot of money from the exhibition, as they stress in the interview. However, the congratulatory bottle of Scassari from The Tate, which the couple receives, is actually from Pippa. Pippa uses the mail communication for a confrontation, where she blames Julia and Seb for the death of Thomas. Going back at the dead birds, it is quite plausible that they are indeed guilty for the murder of Thomas, and presumably, to silence Pippa, they pursue her down the streets. Pippa takes them to her workplace, L’optique, for final treatment.
As the penultimate scene suggests, Seb and Julia become blind from Pippa’s surgery and are robbed of their apparently “artistic” flairs. As Seb is a photographer, being blind is perhaps the greatest threat of all. The final blow to the pair sees Pippa emerging victorious. Her subjectivity reigns supreme in the story. She pays homage to Thomas’ memory by taking righteous action, while as a deus ex machina, she makes Seb bereft of his artistry.
How Does Pippa Send Those Mails?
Before knowing this, you will have to understand laser technology. To make it work, Thomas and Pippa crash a party to install a reflective surface (a mirror) on the side of the cupboard facing the window. As it happens, when Thomas puts the laser on the mirror, the mirror amplifies it and sends it back to him. If he happens to zoom in on the perfect frequency, maybe he can listen to the conversation of their eccentric and promiscuous neighbors.
They listen to the conversation to find Seb and Julia fighting, but that is perhaps an act. After meeting Julia at her eye clinic, Pippa is genuinely concerned for Julia and seeks to warn her about Seb. While that does not happen in person, Pippa finds a dramatic way to communicate with the neighbors. She apparently gets access to their printer and sends out the faxes. It is perfectly plausible to access one’s neighbors by accessing their wi-fi, and assuming Julia and Seb want the neighbors to spy on them, they would not even care to set a password for their wi-fi. However, the technological side of it is not revealed in detail in the movie itself.
Read More: Where Was The Voyeurs Filmed?
