Peeping Tom

SCENE opens on a long, static shot of a small house, tucked amongst several other units. There is a small flutter of movement in the window, as a car pulls into the complex. A father and his 18-year-old daughter are moving into to one of the other units. As they pull into the driveway, the camera lingers on the window. Someone is watching them. The family parks their car, unpacks some boxes from the trunk, and enter their new home — intercut with shots of the window. From the POV of the person inside, you see the teen girl run back to the car, grab a final bag, and take a long look around the complex. She doesn’t realize she is being watched but there is something about the neighboring unit that causes her to pause. She stares at the window before heading back inside.

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Several weeks have passed and the family has settled into their new home. Inside the neighbor’s cluttered unit, the camera pans across various notes, opened mail, and polaroid photos that he has taken while watching them … particularly the 18-year-old girl. The neighbor sits at an arm chair masturbating over the photos when he hears movement outside. He bolts to the window and watches the father leaving the house. From his POV, he sees the father hug his daughter and then drive off. She watches him exit before pulling out her cell phone, making a quick call, and heading back inside. Not able to make out what she said, he jots down the time and event. An hour later, he is woken up from a nap by the sound of another car pulling in. Wiping the drool from his mouth, he bolts back to the window. A boy gets out of his car and runs to the teen. Coyly, she grabs him by the hand and pulls him into her house. Licking his lips, the neighbor jots down the activity in his note book and decides that he needs to get a closer look.

He creeps around to the back of the unit and watches the teen couple through a screen door. The 18-year-old sits the boy down and starts to do a strip tease for him. The neighbor scrambles for his cellphone and starts to record the whole thing. We watch her strip naked before getting down on her knees and starting to crawl towards her boyfriend, intercut with shots of the neighbor nervously recording.

Several days pass. The neighbor keeps re-watching the clip on his phone and decides that fantasizing over the teen girl isn’t enough, he needs to somehow convince her to be with him. So, he comes up with a plan. Posing as the boyfriend, he writes a fake love note and leaves it on her doorstep, before knocking and running back inside his unit. She opens the door and discovers the note, instructing her to come and meet the boyfriend at the neighbor’s house. When the neighbor opens the door, he invites her in, reassuring her that he is in on the romantic scheme and that her boyfriend will be there any minute. She steps inside his house and he shuts the door, locking it.

They sit down in his messy living room in awkward silence. As she tries to make small talk, the neighbor studies her and can barely control himself. From his POV, we see him look her up and down. She becomes restless and starts getting up to leave when the neighbor panics and decides to reveal the video he has recorded. She watches it in silence, her mouth falling open. ‘What are you doing with this?’ she demands. ‘My father can’t know about AJ. I just turned 18 and I’m about to move out on my own next fall. If my dad finds out, he’ll never allow it!’ Gathering his courage, the neighbor tells her that has no choice but to be a good neighbor and tell the father what’s really going on behind his back. The daughter is stunned and, in a moment of weakness, admits to the fact that’s she got secrets she’s trying to keep from him. She begs the neighbor for his silence — offering to do whatever he wants to destroy the evidence. Feeling further empowered, the erratic neighbor asks her to do everything that she did with her boyfriend in the video to him. Not wanting to get caught, she reluctantly agrees, and this descends into the BG sex scene. Throughout the sex, the creepy factor is heightened by the fact that he has clearly memorized the video and keeps referring to it, making her repeat her strip tease and saying things like ‘do that thing with your tongue like you did to him’ etc…

After they have finished, the teen girl makes the neighbor delete the video file as promised. She exits the house angrily, looking over her shoulder. The neighbor closes the door and, leaning up against it with his eyes closed, breathes a sigh of relief and satisfaction. Then he walks over to a laptop set up in the corner of the room that has been secretly recording everything. He leans into the camera and, smiling, turns it off.