Amazon Studios dips its toes into the erotic thriller genre with The Voyeurs, which premieres on the Prime Video platform on September 10. The intense story centers on seemingly happy couple Pippa (Sydney Sweeney, Euphoria) and Thomas (Justice Smith, Detective Pikachu) who move into a new apartment and find they can see a little too much of their neighbors' lives.
What starts off as a fun game between a loving couple quickly evolves into a dark and dangerous mistake as Sydney and Thomas get sucked further and further into lives that are not their own. By the end of the film, everything they thought they knew about the mysterious neighbors (played by EastEenders' Ben Hardy and The Greatest Showman's Natasha Bordizzo) is turned on its head.
Writer and director Michael Mohan spoke with Screen Rant about the important role each member of the cast plays in perfecting the ensemble, and what directorial tricks he used to emphasize the gulf between the pairings.
I really enjoyed The Voyeurs. How did you cast the film? Because I feel like it lives and dies on the chemistry of Pippa with everyone, but also on the two couples.
Michael Mohan: Yeah, 100%. With the character of Pippa, I think the main challenge is that here's this character who makes a series of decisions that the audience might not agree with. So, I needed to find an actor who was so relatable and down to earth that when she falls down this rabbit hole, we're excited to tumble down there with her.
I'd worked with Sydney on a TV show called Everything Sucks! many years ago, and she's the best. I knew at the time that we were only scratching the surface of what she was capable of. Since that experience, I've watched her career blossom - seeing her arc in The Handmaid's Tale and how Cassie in Euphoria is an icon. Then she pops up in Tarantino's movie [Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood], and I'm so proud of her.
As a fan, I was like, "Oh, I know that this is going to be perfect for Syd. I know it's perfect." There's so much range here for her to explore. But as a friend, I was a little nervous to ask her, because this is a movie that's intense, and it's got scenes of intimacy. I didn't want our prior relationship to cloud what is ultimately a very personal decision. But she jumped right in, and we brought the intimacy coordinator along from Euphoria.
I have to say that her trust in me really spread out to the rest of the cast so that, even though we were making this really intense movie, the process of making it was anything but.
I love that we jump right in, and we're following Pippa every step of the way down this rabbit hole. But on the other hand, you've got Seb and Julia, who we don't know at all for half movie. We have no idea what their intentions are, and we only see them through Pippa and Thomas's eyes. Can you talk about approaching those characters, and how you write for or even direct that?
Michael Mohan: Yeah, it was interesting. In terms of casting Seb and Julia, you're right - they don't speak for the first half of the movie, basically. I knew I needed actors who were absolutely riveting to watch, and actors who the camera loves. Obviously, you want to do that with all the actors - and the camera loves Justice too, I don't want to leave him out.
But in watching films like Bohemian Rhapsody, that Ben was in, or Natasha's show, The Society - I found that in a lot of the scenes, they don't necessarily speak in all of those scenes. And they're utterly riveting to watch, even if they're not speaking.
In addition to that, I really needed a gentleman to play Seb, because he's an intense guy. Ben is such a gentleman. And Natasha, she's a model as well, so she was able to tell me all about her experience and the specific insecurities about being a model that we were able to pour into the character to bring more specificity. They were perfect for those two parts.
In terms of how we captured it, that was a whole different story. Because while filming them, I wanted it to feel like the characters felt: as they were getting closer and closer to the truth, these apartments were getting closer and closer together. Originally, I had this crazy idea of, "Let's build the apartments on wheels, and wheel them closer and closer together." And my art my production designer was like, "That's gonna cost you like $3 million," so I was like, "Okay, I guess we can't do that."
But we did it with lenses, so that at the beginning we're very wide, and we only can sort of make them out. And then as they get closer and closer together, we make it seem like the distance between the apartments shrinks.
Justice is great, and Thomas really feels like the moral compass even as he heads down that rabbit hole at first. How did you use him to espouse the theme, if you will?
Michael Mohan: Justice is one of my favorite actors. I mean, they're all my favorite actors, but I've been loving his work ever since he was in Paper Towns and The Get Down. He's so good in those. He's so good in everything that, honestly, I think Justice could have been any of these characters? I would love to see his take on Julia, that'd be really great.
But Justice as a human is just such a naturally smart and empathetic and warm human being. On a Saturday when we weren't shooting, I'd wake up and there'd be a text from him. And it just would say like, "You're a great director," and I was all, "Justice, come on." So, of course, he's gonna play the moral center of the movie just because he has this sense of morality within him.
The Voyeurs arrives September 10 through Amazon Prime Video.
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Reviewed by Riyad
on
September 06, 2021
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