Disturbia
When I sat down to watch Disturbia, I wasn’t really expecting much. Seriously, do we really need a teenage version of Rear Window? On top of that in the wake of American Beauty we’ve had some pretty awful movies that have sought to expose the seedy underbelly of suburbia; most notably The Chumscrubber, Thumbsucker and Running with Scissors. So you can see my apprehension. Amazingly, not only did Disturbia win me over, but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit.
After his father’s death, Kale Brecht (Shia LeBouf) finds himself getting into some trouble and eventually ends up under house arrest. At first, he treats it like a vacation, playing Xbox, watching trash TV and fooling around on iTunes all day. Feeling that his punishment should actually be a punishment Kale’s mom Julie (Carrie-Anne Moss) takes it all away. Without any modern conveniences to distract him Kale begins to turn his attention to the comings and goings of his neighbors. Other than the daily swim of the hot girl next door nothing seems to be out of place, that is until his eye catches Mr. Turner (David Morse). After a local girl is murdered and being cooped up with nothing to do but watch, Kale begins to think that Mr. Turner may be up to something.
With Hollywood always trying to push the next new hot young actor on us, you kind of get tired of hearing it, especially when you know most of them don’t have the chops to stick around. In Shia Lebouf’s case that shouldn’t be a problem. Everyone always goes to the whole “Is he the next Tom Hanks?” comparison. He’s not really like that, he’s more in the vein of a Jon Cusack. He has this quirky likeability with a smartassy charm that will keep him around a while and it’s on full display here. Moss makes the most of her role as a caring but stern mother and Morse does a pretty good job at being creepy while just standing there.
This is a surprisingly well made film. If you just take a cursory glance at the previews, you would never expect that this much effort would have been put into this movie. You’d think that this would be another throw away piece of teenage popcorn fare, instead a lot of thought was put into a suspenseful script that cleverly uses modern technology. I will have to admit that they go a step too far at the end. It gets borderline ridiculous for about three minutes, but it doesn’t ruin anything. One other thing, they didn’t need to add the wall to wall music to give us all our emotional cues. The filmmakers have made a good little thriller and should have had the confidence to realize that it can stand up on its own.
If you’re worried about the sanctity of Hitchcock’s classic being sullied you’re just going to have to get over it. Movies get remade. They always have and they always will. Even Hitchock himself remade his film The Man Who Knew Too Much. More than that, there have been some movies that were really great the second time around including, The Fly, A fFstful of Dollars, The Maltese Falcon and The Wizard of Oz. So what I’m getting is if you’re sitting around like I was, being a pretentious jackass and badmouthing the idea of Disturbia without ever seeing it, well, stop it. Quit being stupid and give it a shot there’s a good chance you’ll like it.
The Grade
- Story: B
- Acting: B
- Visuals: B
- Originality: C
- Enjoyability: B
- Overall: B
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