Not only is "The Voyeurs" the kind of movie Steven Soderbergh makes, I also wish that he had made it. Michael Haneke, too. These auteurs would have found a style befitting of the material that would have made it seem plausible, that would have kept us engrossed, and that, hopefully, would not have required the ridiculous, jarring twists and turns that the movie ends on.
The young couple move into an apartment in Montreal with windows that look directly into an apartment across the street. The very first time they look, they watch the couple in that apartment have sex. They continue to watch, get turned on, and even go so far as planting a listening device.
The climactic twist isn't entirely predictable. I wasn't surprised. But still, Soderbergh or Haneke could have put more of a point on it. Here it was a bit "meh", as my generation likes to say.
I really think that the twists and turns that come after were put in as an afterthought when the director realised nobody was going to buy what he had sold up to that point. It almost feels like a consolation prize, as though he's saying, "I agree that sucked because I don't have the skill to do it the way Haneke would have... oh well, here's some extra tawdry garbage."
He should have just made an erotic thriller. This is more like "Sliver" than "Benny's Video" or even "The Girlfriend Experience". And an erotic thriller would have been more fun. The attempts at seriousness or social commentary come to nothing, and in the final act, are totally abandoned.
