"Disturbia" Movie Review

The premise itself is brilliant in its simplicity: a victim of circumstance is confined to his home, where in his boredom, he begins spying on a neighbor.

The neighbor becomes an object of suspicion and dread when evidence mounts that he is a killer with gruesome remains hidden on his property.

The original model for this scenario was Hitchcock's Rear Window, an elegant thriller starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly, two of the classiest actors in the history of movies.

Rear Window was a movie about adults for adults, and in this regard Disturbia suffers by the comparison.

Disturbia is to Rear Window what Cruel Intentions is to Dangerous Liaisons -- a lightweight teen flick patterned after an adult story.

Shia LaBeouf plays the voyeur, a troubled teenager under house arrest. LaBeouf is adequate to the task, though his performance displays the qualities of a thinking rather than a feeling actor. There are scenes in Disturbia that would have been far more effective if Kale's actions and emotions felt like they came from his gut, rather than being the surface affect of an actor going through the motions.

For better or worse, Disturbia uses much of its time establishing relationships with Kale's friends and neighbors and introducing a romantic interest in the person of Ashley, the new girl next door.

The flirtatious chemistry between the smitten but inexperienced Kale and the much more confident Ashley is one of the best things about the film. Indeed, it's the quiet, intimate moments between characters -- the warmth between father and son and the face-to-face confrontations with the calmly threatening killer that are the most emotionally effecting.

Unfortunately, the thrills and shocks that one would expect as the payoff for a film called Disturbia come as a series of very familiar, even hackneyed scenes the likes of which have been fodder for parody for at least ten years.

The truly unforgettable scenes in film are when our expectations are surpassed, when a moment we expect will be scary is suddenly even more shocking than we could have imagined, when an image of horror or suspense is so unique that it becomes unforgettable.

The film Taking Lives by Disturbia's director D.J. Caruso did have an unforgettable scene in its satisfying climax. There are no such moments in Disturbia, and as a result the overall effect of the film is tepid, with a sense of opportunities missed for the sake of appealing to a young audience.

The disappointment of Disturbia is that it's not very disturbing at all.


DISTURBIA
directed by D.J. Caruso

Starring
Shia LaBeouf ..................Kale
Carrie-Anne Moss ...........Julie
David Morse ...................Mr. Turner
Sarah Roemer ................Ashley
Aaron Yoo .....................Ronnie
Jose Pablo Cantillo .........Officer Gutierrez