Voyeur review

“the film explores the complex relationship between the two men, the journalist and the voyeur.”

If there’s one thing the internet loves, it’s Netflix and true crime documentaries. So how Voyeur, a true crime documentary on Netflix, managed to fly under the radar when it was released in 2017 is a mystery. The film tells the story of Gerald Foos, a man who bought a motel in 1969 for the express purpose of spying on strangers while they *ahem* were intimate, and Gay Talese, the man who set out to reveal the whole sordid saga to the world.

With this documentary, the sheer thought for viewers of being observed by the gleefully creepy, overweight, and balding Foos would be repulsive enough to ensure an audience’s captive interest. Voyeur, however, is far more interested in exploring Talese’s efforts to tell the story of the voyeur’s motel rather than the story of the voyeur’s motel itself. In doing so, the film explores the complex relationship between the two men, the journalist and the voyeur.

There are many benefits to this approach, but anyone hoping for a reckoning for Foos and his actions will be disappointed. The film mostly avoids trying to confront Foos with the amorality of his actions or inspire reflection in the man who proudly boasts about touching himself over unsuspecting couples at least two or three times a night. There’s brief mention of the likelihood of Foos being some sort of sociopath, but that’s as far as the film goes in terms of judgement, instead focusing on why Foos wants to speak about his story.

Ego is probably the biggest reason. This is something he shares with Talese, the film’s other subject. Talese is famous in America as one of its greatest journalists. But here, as he sets out to tell the voyeurs story, it is the journalist who finds himself under scrutiny. In his single-minded pursuit of the story, he ignores evidence that undermines Foos’s credibility, bulldozes Foos’s concerns about the content of the book he is writing and even drops in the astounding detail that he actually visited the motel one night.

The power dynamics between the two alter at whiplash speed, and the film delights pulling the rug from underneath the audiences’ feet every time it gets too comfortable. Revelation follows revelation and creepy detail follows creepy detail, giving the film it’s seedy and constantly shifting tone. But it’s the relationship between the film’s subjects that grounds the story even if, by the end of the documentary, it’s impossible to tell who has the upper hand in their relationship and who has achieved everything they set out to achieve. The thought inevitably occurs that neither of them have.

Boasting a creepy score, unsettling re-enactments, and a story almost too weird to be believed, Voyeur is a hidden gem of the true crime genre.