Peeking Beyond the Glass: The Voyeurs and the Real Stories Behind Its Stars
Beyond rejuvenating the erotic thriller genre, The Voyeurs reopened a window into obsession, desire, and the risky thrill of watching the forbidden. The film was directed by Michael Mohan and featured Sydney Sweeney, Justice Smith, Ben Hardy, and Natasha Liu Bordizzo. Each of them intersected the lives of characters, tracing their own battles with fame, vulnerability, and the slope of exposure and privacy.
However, the fascination with The Voyeurs is best understood when looking beyond the characters’ telescope. The film comes close to autobiographical for the cast, particularly Sydney Sweeney, who knows a thing or two about being watched.
A Love Story Turned Into an Obsession
The story begins innocently enough. Pippa (played by Sydney Sweeney) and Thomas (Justice Smith), a young couple in Montreal, move into a modern apartment and soon discover they can see directly into their neighbors’ window across the street. At first, it’s harmless curiosity—a romantic game between two lovers fascinated by the glamorous, passionate life of the couple opposite them, Seb (Ben Hardy) and Julia (Natasha Liu Bordizzo).
But curiosity, as always, breeds danger. Pippa becomes increasingly fixated on the couple’s relationship, noting the discord, infidelity, and ultimately the couple’s hidden truths. When Thomas, her partner, implores her to stop, she remains resolute. What begins as thrilling voyeurism, descends into an inescapable obsession, and consuming guilt. When Pippa’s interference culminates in tragic fallout, the film chillingly reveals the watcher never had control.
The Voyeurs is not merely a story about voyeurism; it is a complex psychological narrative about the intrinsic human impulses to bond, to comprehend, and to dominate the inaccessible. It, in part, represented the real-life disquiet of its protagonists, especially Sydney Sweeney and Justice Smith, who were both experiencing the phenomenon of social media stardom and the disquiet of being both the voyeur and the object of the gaze.
In the case of Sydney Sweeney, it is about Living in the Spotlight.
In her performance as Pippa, Sweeney has, perhaps, achieved one of her most sophisticated performances in the articulation of a fine line between innocence and obsession. Sweeney has spoken about the disquiet of being exposed to the relentless gaze of Hollywood and the social media audience. As with Sweeney, who has to guard her identity while, in the words of Pippa, “slowly losing herself trying to make sense of another couple’s life”, so, too, Pippa is a character who loses her identity in obsession in trying to make sense of another couple’s life.
Sweeney’s most prominent roles, before The Voyeurs, were in Euphoria and The White Lotus, shows that display the same themes of intimacy, vulnerability, and exposure. In interviews, Sweeney has discussed how in The Voyeurs, she was literally forced to perform the mental exercise of confronting her discomfort of being watched. “The camera was everywhere, and sometimes it felt too real,” she said.
Sweeney has experienced the same loss of boundaries that Pippa went through. The emotional shifts Sweeney characterized—excitement to fear, guilt to realization—felt lived in. Sweeney seems to understand what it means to be seen too much, to be misunderstood even more.
Sweeney was also one of the film’s executive producers, which meant she had control over a story that dealt directly with objectification and the female gaze. This was a possible career risk, but it was more of a statement—an actress reclaiming her power in a story about surveillance and exploitation.
Justice Smith: The Quiet Counterbalance
While Sweeney’s Pippa is drawn to danger, Smith’s Thomas represents reason, calm, and the moral compass that Pippa is slowly discarding. Smith, who has appeared in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Detective Pikachu, is always more thoughtful and introspective in his roles, a quality that also relates to his off-screen personality.
Smith has discussed the pressure to remain mentally strong and the anxiety that comes with one’s authenticity in the world of images. Like Thomas, who is helpless as his partner starts drifting into obsession, Smith has talked about times in his career when he has felt overshadowed and the gaps in his control to “fix” something.
Reportedly on set, Smith provided a calming force in balance to Sweeney’s passionate intensity. The two actors shared a trust that enabled them to aid one another during emotionally challenging moments, especially in the pivotal breakdown scenes of the film. Their relationship, both on and off the screen, truly provided the film with the foundation for its emotional truth—two people loving one another deeply yet losing sight of reality.
Ben Hardy and Natasha Liu Bordizzo: Seduction and Artifice
Ben Hardy’s Seb takes the “neighbor fantasy” to another level. Seb is a photographer, and on the outside, his life seems perfect—he’s a mysterious charm and confidence, but beneath the surface, there are cracks to show. Hardy, who is widely recognized for his role in Bohemian Rhapsody, has talked about the real-life experience of sudden fame and typecasting that follows. His role in Bohemian Rhapsody, especially as Roger Taylor, led to his typecasting as the dangerous romantic man and playing Seb provided the perfect opportunity for him to challenge his type as charm becomes manipulation.
With Seb’s predatory charm, Natasha Liu Bordizzo’s Julia, the model and his muse, provides the counterbalancing charm of silent pain. Bordizzo, who has spoken about the stereotypes surrounding her in Hollywood as an Asian-Australian performer, has had a noticeable increase in her Hollywood credits recently with The Society and Day Shift. In The Voyeurs, her performance reflected a powerful unspoken sadness. For Julia, that sadness is a burden of being a woman performer—watched constantly, yet seldom understood.
Together, Hardy and Bordizzo embodied Pippa’s obsession: the seductive illusion of glamour concealing manipulation and deceit.
The Art of Watching: Behind the Camera
Filming The Voyeurs was an exercise in perspective. The set was designed so two apartments could faced each other, allowing real-time interactions through glass— no green screens, no camera tricks. Director Michael Mohan encouraged the actors to improvise and let discomfort shape their performances.
Sydney Sweeney later revealed how emotionally exhausting certain scenes were, especially the ones in which Pippa comes to understand the extent of her intrusion. “It was like holding up a mirror,” she said. “You think you’re in control of what you’re seeing, but the movie turns that around on you.”
Cinematographer Elisha Christian conferred a sense of safety, then illumined and reflected light, playing with the audience’s mind. Every window became both a screen and a trap— and a reminder that the difference between watcher and watched is paper-thin.
Reflections of Reality in Fiction
The Voyeurs raised questions we usually do not want to face: What does it mean to bear witness to one’s unfolding life? What drives one to watch another’s life unfold closely? What is the line between genuine curiosity and vicious voyeurism? In many ways, the film became a modern parable about fame in the digital age. Through the character of Sydney Sweeney, the film both art and confession, and the loneliness that comes with being visible, and the fear of losing oneself to the other’s gaze was captured.
As Indian audiences we understood, and the film’s cultural resonation was in the Indian context. Between the constructs of ‘sheltered’ and ‘exposed’, a culturally Indian audience understands the hidden and openly displayed. Self watching, the film reminded us, is often the most difficult.
The film, like the apartment window in Montreal, puts questions to us. When we watch, do we simply reach for understanding of own life?